Social support and psychological distress in women and men

The relationship between psychological distress and social support was investigated, along with various other health-relevant variables, in a nationally representative sample of some 2050 women and 1873 men, who also returned the self-completion questionnaire in the 1984-85 British Health and Lifestyle Survey. Psychological distress was measured with the 30-item General Health Questionnaire. Stepwise regression analyses indicated that the quality of family support accounted for a significant increase of 0.2-1.0 per cent of the variance in the GHQ for women and 0.8-1.9 per cent for men. The correlation between family support and distress was reduced from -.13 to -.04 for women and from -.15 to -.10 for men when all other variables were partialled out. It was highest (-.33) for the better qualified women and men in the youngest (18-24) age group.