About 1 1/2 times more married women than men suffer from depression during holiday seasons due to intensified household chores and family-related stress, a survey showed Monday.

Recruitment portal service Job Korea said they interviewed 1,921 working adults online and via mobile services on whether they feel depressed during holidays, as Chuseok took place last week.

Forty-two percent of the respondents said they felt temporarily depressed around the holiday.

More than half or 53.0 percent of married women said they felt depressed, compared to 33.8 percent of married men.

More women (50.4 percent) in general also answered they felt depressed than men (36.2 percent).

Married women were the most vulnerable to depression followed by single women (48.6 percent), single men (39.0 percent) and married man.

By age, 45.4 percent of those in their 40s answered they felt depressed, followed by those in their 50s (43.6 percent), 30s (41.4 percent) and 20s (37.5 percent).
As for the main symptoms, 68.4 percent said they felt unmotivated or unenthusiastic, followed by indigestion (31.5 percent), headaches (21.8 percent), insomnia (19.6 percent) and loss of appetite (12.9 percent).

According to The Minjoo Party of Korea’s Rep. Keum Tae-sup, some 92,000 sought medical help for manic-depressive symptoms last year, with the number surging by over 1,000 before and after major holidays such as the New Year and Chuseok.

Citing data from the Gender Equality Ministry, Keum added that counseling phone calls made during the four-day Chuseok holiday last year reached 2,947 -- more than 17 times the daily average for the year.

“The fact that more counseling help is sought during the holiday season means that family conflicts tend to peak before and after the holiday due to household chores and other sources of tension among families,” Keum said.

Another recent survey showed that men were also prone to feeling depressed during family gatherings.

According to a survey by recruitment portal Incruit on 500 of its male members, 76 percent said they were stressed, mainly due to the economic burden such as buying gifts and giving allowances (14 percent), long hours of driving (12 percent), traffic jams (11 percent), questions from family members concerning their marital status and employment (9 percent) and post-holiday conflicts with wives, girlfriends or female siblings (7 percent).

In response to a question on how they relieve stress, 27 percent said they had no specific way of dealing with stress, followed by those who said they did so by drinking or hanging out with others (13 percent), trying to think positively (12 percent) and deciding not to visit their hometown (8 percent). 
(khnews@heraldcorp.com)