The seventh edition of the “ACHS-UC Mental Health Thermometer in Chile” showed an increase in the gender gap in terms of mental health in the first quarter of the year: 17.5% of the people surveyed exhibited symptoms associated with the suspicion of this type of problems, which represents an increase of 2 percentage points compared to the previous issue and would be mainly driven by a deterioration in women.
The study is promoted by the Chilean Security Association (ACHS) and the UC Center for Surveys and Longitudinal Studies of the Catholic University, and was carried out through telephone interviews with a sample of 2,591 people over 18 years of age during March and April 2023.
The survey showed that 25% of the interviewees have mental health problems, which represents an increase of 6 points compared to the previous edition. This result contrasts with men, who dropped 2 points (9.6%).
There was also a relevant rise in the symptoms of depression, with 4 points more in women (20%) compared to 2022. In contrast, men dropped almost 4 points and reached 6.8%. Indicators such as perception of loneliness and insomnia showed an increase of 2 points in women, reaching 26% and 18.6% respectively; while men dropped 2 points, presenting 15% and 13.8% respectively.
The ACHS technical chief of Psychosocial Risks, Daniela Campos, explained that “the gender gap in mental health problems is something we have seen since the beginning of this survey. However, in this seventh round, a trend that we had been seeing since 2021 was broken, where both men and women showed different levels of discomfort, but they went down or stayed the same. On this occasion we saw how only men reflected significant decreases and women showed increases for the first time in years”.
