title: Handedness and depression: evidence from a large population survey.
abstract: There is a considerable body of research arguing for an association between psychotic disorders and atypical brain lateralisation--where non-right-handedness is usually taken as a marker for the latter. By contrast, there has been less attention given to a possible link between handedness and affective disorders (particularly major depression) and, unlike the case of psychosis, there is no a priori reason for such a link. There are very few studies of the relationship between depression and handedness in normal populations. This paper uses a new large population survey from 12 European countries to measure the association between handedness and depression. It is found that, using three different measures, left-handers are significantly more likely to have depressive symptoms than right-handers. For example left-handers are about 5% more likely to have reported having ever experienced symptoms of depression compared to about 27% of the total sample.
authors.affiliation: School of Economics, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland. Kevin.denny@ucd.ie
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Denny
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D003865:Major Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods*; D008875:Middle Aged; D011159:Population Surveillance; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires