Why Women Are Diagnosed With Anxiety More Than Men, And What’s Really Going On

So, let’s start with the number that probably brought you here. Doctors diagnose women with anxiety disorders at a rate of 23.4% compared to just 14.3% for men. This is not a small gap, but nearly double the number.

Women have spent years listening to “Why are women so emotional?” But have people ever considered the real reason behind this question? The real story of why women are diagnosed with anxiety more than men lies in biology and brain chemistry.

A woman’s body works differently, her brain processes stress differently, and she carries a completely different kind of pressure every day than most men do. Every part of this matters, so let’s break it down simply.

Why Women Are Diagnosed With Anxiety More Than Men: The Hormonal Timeline Nobody Talks About Enough

Let me tell you something interesting. Before puberty, boys and girls experience anxiety at approximately the same rate. Then, when the teenage years arrive, and hormones come in, the gap starts to grow. It keeps growing, through their pregnancy, after having a baby, during the years before menopause, and through menopause itself.

Now, when the older age comes, the hormone levels in men and women start to even out, and the gap starts getting smaller again. So, this is one of the reasons why women are diagnosed with anxiety more than men.

This almost clears everything. The main female hormones, estrogen and progesterone, directly control how anxious a woman feels at different points in her life.

Most of the women notice their anxiety getting worse a few days before their period. That’s the phase when progesterone drops, and for some women, it causes really bad mood swings as well.

Then, after having a baby, estrogen drops fast, faster than almost any other time in a woman’s life. That sudden drop creates the perfect conditions for anxiety and depression after birth. Postpartum depression is a thing that affects 1 in 7 women after giving birth.

A study published on PubMed by the National Library of Medicine found that women with higher progesterone levels consistently experience higher anxiety than women with lower levels.

And later, during the years leading up to menopause, hormones swing up and down wildly. Some women who have never had a panic attack in their lives suddenly start having them.

You might know the connection between anxiety and women’s hormones if you’ve read my article Can Hormonal Imbalance Cause Anxiety in Females?

How the Female Brain Handles Stress Differently, And Why Women Suffer From Anxiety More

Now it’s time to compare the brain chemistry of males and females. and the way their brains handle stress and fear differently.

The fight-or-flight response is the alarm system that turns on when you feel threatened. This response switches on faster in women and stays on longer.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, women not only develop anxiety disorders more than men, but they also experience more severe symptoms and carry them for longer.

However, a woman’s brain is slower at processing serotonin, a chemical that helps you feel calm and okay. Women are much more sensitive to a stress hormone called CRF, which tells your body to go into panic mode. Some studies also show that women are twice as sensitive to this hormone as men.

Now, the third aspect of brain chemistry is about the default mode network in our brains. This network switches on when your body is not doing anything. This is the part that makes your brain overthink and replay conversations from three days ago and wonder if you said something wrong. So, this network is more active among women than men.

This almost clarifies many things about why women get diagnosed with anxiety more than men, but it doesn’t mean that a woman is weak or broken.

Are you also struggling with overthinking at night?  Reading Why I Can’t Stop Overthinking at Night, What It Really Means and How to Find Relief, might help.

The Pressure Women Face Every Day: Anxiety in Women Isn’t Just About Biology

Nevertheless, biology isn’t the whole story. Because even if the brains and hormones of every man and woman become the same, women will still be dealing with more daily pressure that builds up over time and makes them more anxious.

The World Health Organization identifies gender inequality as one of the biggest causes of poor mental health in women globally. Women do more unpaid work, face more discrimination, and have less financial security than men.

We all know that women are also more likely to experience physical or sexual violence in their lives.

The WHO reports that 1 in 3 women worldwide go through this and then develop PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder), panic attacks, and social anxiety afterwards.

Honestly, going through such trauma in life can truly disrupt one’s mental health.

If panic attacks are something you’re also dealing with, my article about What Really Happens to Your Body During a Panic Attack – And How to Calm It Fast can help you understand panic attacks better.

How Anxiety Shows Up Differently in Men, And Why It Keeps Getting Missed

You might be wondering what a man’s anxiety looks like. Let me tell you this, we can’t see a man’s anxiety. Because male anxiety doesn’t look like what most people think when they imagine someone who’s anxious. It doesn’t always look like worrying, or avoiding things, or having panic attacks.

It can look like getting furious in traffic over something small. Or smoking every night and calling it relaxing. Like working insane hours and calling it being passionate. Like going cold and distant from everyone you love and calling it needing space.

None of those things really looks like anxiety on the surface. But for a lot of men, anxiety is exactly what’s inside.

Studies show that men with undiagnosed anxiety disorders are much more likely to also struggle with alcohol and drug use, explosive anger, and other issues that look completely unrelated to anxiety.

Mind UK explains that anxiety doesn’t always look like nervousness or fear, but it can show up as physical symptoms like headaches and chest tightness, as irritability and aggression, or as complete emotional shutdown.

As men are generally less expressive than women, these physical behavioral signs can be clues that they are experiencing something deeper.

One of the common anxiety symptoms that both genders experience can be migraines, as discussed in my article Does Anxiety Cause Migraines? Is Your Stress Triggering Severe Head Pain?

The Bottom Line on Why Women Get Diagnosed With Anxiety More Than Men

Now that you understand why women get diagnosed with anxiety more than men, nobody gets to tell a woman, “You’re so emotional” anymore. Hormones matter, brain chemistry matters, social pressure and trauma matter. There isn’t a single answer, but rather many that are interconnected.

If you’re a woman reading my article, your anxiety is real, and it makes complete biological sense. If you’re a man, if you’re unexpressive, it doesn’t mean there is no anxiety you’re going through; it just means no one ever gave you the words.

And if someone you love is struggling, keep the door open, your mind broad, and your ears always listening. That’s often the most important thing anyone can do.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Gender Gap in Anxiety