Country Folk
According to the Mayo Clinic and PsychCentral, rural women suffer a serious depression risk:
In a recent study, researchers for the Mayo Clinic discovered unmarried women living in rural areas have lower self-rated health status than their married counterparts. This lower health status often includes greater instances of self-assessed feelings of depression.
For single women, the problems are greater.
“Economic problems increase feelings of emotional stress. People today are worried about, among other things, the mortgage crisis and high gas prices. Many are left wondering how they are going to pay for necessities. Statistically, rural, unmarried women are more often economically depressed than their married counterparts,” says [the Mayo Clinic's] Dr. [James] Rohrer.
Depression Risk for Rural Women
[Photos of Country Woman cover girl Rosemary Corte, a peanut farmer.]
Comments
That explains the Des Moines Register pictures of women running INTO the water!
Posted by: HS | June 14, 2008 10:48 AM
You know, I think that it's not that cut-and-dried. When I leave my job in the city for my rural home, I almost feel my brain just breathing a big sigh of contentment and gratitude. But various other situations in my life have on occasion made me frustrated that there are few resources and the ones that exist are far away. So I can see both aspects.
I also think that depending on what kind of person you are, the anonymity of living in a city might be preferable to the fish-bowl type of existence in the rural small towns. But it's all a matter of point of view and I don't think a person can examine just this one aspect of life and draw a firm conclusion.
Posted by: Carol | June 16, 2008 03:50 AM
Call me sexist, but it would make more sense to me if the depression came from less social contact. As men in rural areas have just as much trouble finding work -- not counting farmers -- but I bet there are female farmers nowadays so I think this is the case that men would have just as much economic tension as women. Yet I am going to go with the generalization that women need more social interaction than men.
Posted by: Jim G | June 19, 2008 01:35 PM