Cumulative trauma, gender discrimination and mental health in women: mediating role of self-esteem.

BACKGROUND: Evidence suggests that women show symptoms of trauma-related symptoms more often than men. Gender discrimination is also associated with the severity of symptoms in women.

AIMS: This study explored the relations among cumulative trauma, gender discrimination and mental health in women with a mediating role of self-esteem and emotion regulation. Two types of gender discrimination were taken into account: discrimination by parents and in the social context. Cumulative trauma over the lifetime was assessed, as well as three types of symptoms: internalising, externalising, psychoticism.

METHODS: A total of 277 females from Poland participated in the study. It was hypothesised that gender discrimination and cumulative trauma would be positively related to symptoms and that lowered self-esteem mediates these relations.

RESULTS: Hypotheses received partial confirmation, as both gender discrimination and cumulative trauma have been shown to be related to three types of symptoms. Self-esteem was a partial mediator between gender discrimination in the social context and symptoms. It was also demonstrated that emotion suppression is a partial mediator between cumulative trauma and symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS: It has been demonstrated that socio-cultural factors, such as gender discrimination, play an important role in psychiatric symptoms development.