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Comment by adbge | Hacker News Reader

This is self-reported, yes? Culturally speaking, I imagine women would tend to report much higher numbers than men -- even in a scenario where it was a 1:1 split.

I'd take that poll with a grain of salt, and I sincerely doubt that 'femanons' are 10x more likely to be suffering from moderate to severe mental illness.

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It was self-reported, of course, how would you want to conduct this kind of poll...

The methodology is of course deeply flawed. Even though the anonymity of the poll allows people to report such issues without guilt (or even with pride), it also encourages trolling.

I didn't start that poll, I just happened to pass by while it was being held. I read around 150 answers. My memory isn't perfect, but here is what I remember. None of the 15 females reported a normal mental health or even mild troubles. Around the same number of males reported serious mental issues (things like bipolar disorder, borderline personality, multiple phobias, panic attacks, major depression, schizophrenia, hospitalization in mental health institutes for whatever reason).

I'm not sure why girls would be culturally more inclined to report severe mental illness (even though, from my clinical experience, I wouldn't be surprised if they had a tendency to report mild mental troubles more easily). Is this bias documented somewhere? Also, even if such a bias exists, it wouldn't explain such a wide difference.

Assuming that the poll was not massively rigged by trolls, and with only 66% of females with mental issues, the P-value of Fisher's exact test is under 0.001.

    120  15 | 135
      5  10 |  15
    --------+----
    125  25 | 150

http://statpages.org/ctab2x2.html

The probability of getting a sample with 66% of the females in good mental health (keeping the rate in males identical) when there is no gender difference regarding mental health in the population is around 0.03.

Being "bipolar", "depressed" or "ocd" is still considered fashionable in some circles. I would assume fairly significant overreporting.

That's true, but why would women over-report disproportionately more than men?

It might not even be simple over-reporting; women have more diagnoses than men. Women go to the doctor more.

This isn't to say it isn't still bullshit. I know two women with OCD diagnoses, but neither present typical symptoms. One is the most foul-smelling slob I know, the complete opposite of your typical OCD person. The other seems relatively normal.

Women are typically more communicative than men when it comes to psychological and/or physical ailments -- that's just the nature of things. Have you ever known a woman before?

I suppose one never does know oneself.

I'd take any poll that 4chan members vote with a grain of salt. That said, I'd expect the proportion of "mentally ill" women in 4chan to be far higher than men, just as I'd expect for a strip club or porn film set.

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