Comparative Study of Depression According to Gender and Gender schema in Teenagers

	Comparative Study of Depression According to Gender and Gender schema in Teenagers
Journal of College of Education
Article 1, Volume 2, Issue 2, 2017, Pages 219-290
Abstract
The distinction between male and female serve as a basic organization principle for every human culture. Although societies differ in the specific tasks they assign to the two sexes, all societies allocate adult roles on the basis of sex and anticipate this allocation in the socialization of their children. A gender schema organizes the world in term of female and male. Gender schema theory states that an individual’s attention and behavior are guided by an internal motivation to conform to gender-based sociocultural standards and stereotypes. Variations in the way people think about themselves have a strong impact on their emotional experiences. Individuals with a unified self-schema would tend to interpret failure in this one area as implying incompetence in all areas, In contrast to people with differentiated self-schema. Tendency to see oneself as generally and permanently inadequate rather than as merely prone to specific or temporary weakness may form the cognitive basis for depression and other psychological disorder. Depression is probably the most common disorder among teenager. The research aimed at the following: 1. Identify gender schema among a sample of teenagers. 2. Identify symptoms of depression among a sample of teenagers. 3. Identify differences in depression symptoms according to the variables gender and gender schema. The researcher adopted Bem Gender Schema to explain the results. As for depression scale the researcher depended in its construction on diagnosis and statistical manual of the American Psychiatric association DSM-IV. The study sample consisted of 300 teenagers. The research revealed the following findings: 1. Masculine gender schema is the common gender schema in males and the feminine gender schema is the common gender schema in females. The females showed more androgynous gender schema than males. 2. Presence of higher levels of depression symptoms among teenagers. 3. There are no statistically significant differences in depression according to gender, and there are statically significant differences in depression according to gender schema as there is an interaction between the two variables gender and gender schema.

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