Hindawi Publishing Corporation Nursing Research and Practice Volume 2012, Article ID 109251, 5 pages doi:10.1155/2012/109251 Research Article Gender Differences in Self-Reported Symptoms of Depression among Patients with Acute Coronary Syndrome Lorraine Frazier,1 Erica Yu,1 Jennifer Sanner,1 Fang Liu,1 Malini Udtha,1 Stanley Cron,1 Stephanie Coulter,2 and Roberta C. Bogaev2 1 School of Nursing, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, 6901 Bertner Avenue 577, Houston, TX 77030, USA 2 Texas Heart Institute, St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, 6624 Fannin, Suite 2780, Houston, TX 77030, USA Correspondence should be addressed to Lorraine Frazier, lorraine.frazier@uth.tmc.edu Received 16 March 2011; Revised 19 November 2011; Accepted 23 January 2012 Academic Editor: Alan Pearson Copyright © 2012 Lorraine Frazier et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This study examined the prevalence of self-reported depressive symptoms and the self reported somatic depressive symptoms as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) among patients hospitalized for acute coronary syndrome (ACS), and explored the impact of gender on both. A convenience sample of 789 adults (248 women and 541 men) was recruited for the study during hospital admission for ACS and participants were screened for self-reported depressive symptoms. BDI-II scores of ≥14 indicate a moderate level of depressive symptoms and this cut-oﬀ score was used to categorize patients into depressed and non-depressed groups. Pearson chi-square tests for independence (categorical variables) and t tests for independent samples (continuous variables) were used for gender comparisons. Results showed that depressive symptoms during ACS episodes were diﬀerent between women and men. Women reported greater overall depressive symptoms (BDI-II mean = 11.89, S.D. = 9.68) than men (BDI-II mean = 9.00, S.D. = 7.93) (P < 0.000). Signiﬁcantly more women (7.66%) were identiﬁed positive for somatic depressive symptoms (sleep and appetite disturbances and fatigue) than men (2.22%) (P = 0.0003). Findings support that there are gender diﬀerences in depressive symptoms experienced by patients hospitalized for ACS. Somatic symptoms of depression may be important indicators of depression especially among female ACS patients. 1. Introduction Each year 2.4 million Americans are hospitalized for acute coronary syndrome (ACS) [1]. Growing evidence supports that post-ACS depression is an independent risk factor for future cardiac events and mortality [2–4], and females are disproportionately aﬀected [5]. An estimated 7.5 million females live with a history of ACS [1] and up to 47% of fe- males report symptoms of depression when screened for depression during hospitalization for ACS [6]. Depression is the most common mental illness in females and females have twice the risk of major depressive disorder (MDD) as compared with males [7, 8]. Data from National Comorbid- ity Survey (NCS) supports the gender diﬀerence life time risk for MDD (21% in females and 13% in males) [9]. Population studies from Canada [10], Germany [11], and Switzerland [12] all report that females are at least twice as likely as males to suﬀer from MDD. In addition to the gender diﬀerence in prevalence of depression episodes, the depression symptoms that diﬀer between males and females are heterogeneous with complex clusters of depressive symptoms [13, 14]. Data from large epidemiological studies reveals that males and females often report distinct diﬀerences in the self- reported somatic depressive symptoms of depression [15– 17]. Somatic depressive symptoms include sleep disturbance, appetite disturbance, and fatigue for at least two weeks [15– 17]. Silverstein interviewed college students and found that female students had higher somatic depressive symptoms than male students [18]. Self-reported data from NCS also indicated that females reported twice the frequency of so- matic depression symptoms as compared to males [19]. Al- though higher rates of depression have been reported in