and smoking were associated with elevated depressive symptoms in adolescent females, but not males, whereas marijuana use was associated with depressive symptoms for both genders. In adults, the association between marijuana dependence and MDD was nearly twice as strong for women than men (Conway, 2006), and among those with lifetime alcohol dependence, women had nearly twice the rate of lifetime depression as men (Kessler et al., 1997). Potential mechanisms that may explain these gender differences include greater neurotoxicity of substances (particularly alcohol) in females due to smaller body size (Guerri and Pascual, 2010), differences in timing of brain development and effects of substances on the brain arising from hormonal differences (Medina et al., 2008), and differential salience of social support and peer norms by gender (Gutman and Eccles, 2007).
