[Work segregation and gender. Characterization of psychiatric morbidity registered in a hospital of Mexico City (1993-1995)].
BACKGROUND
Different studies have documented that the differential distribution of the health-illness process depends upon economic, political and cultural factors. For the purpose of identifying and explaining the relationship between gender as related to occupation and psychiatric morbility, an analysis is made of the distribution of the statistics for these disorders for one population of mental patients.


METHODS
Documentary research was conducted throughout the 1993-1995 period, during which the clinical records of those patients who had been admitted for the first time to a psychiatric hospital in Mexico City over a three-year period were reviewed, obtaining the main socioeconomic and diagnosis-related data. A second stage consisted of the statistical analysis in which the relationship among the gender, occupation and diagnosis variables was measured.


RESULTS
A total of 1,084 individuals with some mental disorder were recorded, statistically significant differences having been found between men and women with regard to their occupation and to the specific mental disorder with which they were diagnosed, especially as far as depression and drug use-related disorders were concerned.


CONCLUSIONS
The gender and occupation-related segregation due to said gender are social processes involved in the differential distribution of mental disorders, this being a relationship which is revealed in specific patterns of detriment to the mental health of the males and females who were cared for at this hospital.
Granados Cosme
José Arturo
JA
Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Calz. Del Hueso 1100, Col. Villa Quietud 04960, Coyoacán, México, D.F. jcosme@cueyatl.uam.mx
Ortiz Hernández
Luis
L
Garduño Andrade
María de los Angeles
Mde L
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D004651:Employment; D005260:Female; D006778:Hospitals, Psychiatric; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology*; D008800:Mexico; D008875:Middle Aged; D011287:Prejudice; D017678:Sex Distribution; D014504:Urban Health