Women suffer more mental health problems than men due to stress of juggling many roles, according to study

Women experience more mental health problems than men due to the stress of juggling many roles, according to a new book.

Professor Daniel Freeman, of the University of Oxford, said the first systematic investigation of national mental health surveys showed psychological disorders are 20 to 40 per cent more common in women than men in any given year, The Daily Mail reports.

Stress related to pressure on women to fill many different roles is likely to be a major factor for higher rates of everything from depression to phobias, according to Professor Freeman, a clinical psychologist.

'The biggest discrepancies occur in conditions for which we know the environment, rather than genes, makes the greatest causal contribution,' he said. 'It's certainly plausible that women experience higher levels of stress because of the demands of their social role.

'Increasingly, women are expected to function as carer, homemaker, and breadwinner - all while being perfectly shaped and impeccably dressed.

'Given that domestic work is undervalued, and considering that women tend to be paid less, find it harder to advance in a career, have to juggle multiple roles, and are bombarded with images of apparent female 'perfection', it would be surprising if there weren't some emotional and psychological cost.

'These are the kind of pressures that can leave women feeling as if they've somehow failed; as if they don't have what it takes to be successful; as if they've been left behind. And those kinds of feelings can lead to psychological problems like anxiety and depression.'