ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Psychopathology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1594762
Gender Role Identity, Personality Factors, and Psychiatric Symptoms Among American Adults: The Nathan Kline Institute Rockland Sample
Provisionally accepted
Mathias Rossi1
Maryse Arcand1
Mike Schmidt2
Theodorus G M Sandfort2
Francelyne Jean-Baptiste1
Marie-France Marin3Spiro P Pantazatos2
Robert-Paul Juster1*- 1Montreal University, Montreal, Canada
- 2Columbia University, New York City, New York, United States
- 3Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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Introduction. Gender roles and personality traits have been reported to impact mental health. This study aims to investigate the relationship between gender role identity and psychiatric symptoms (anxiety, depressive symptoms, suicidality) as well as the moderating effects of personality traits in a community-representative sample of American adults. Methods. Data from 741 participants (65.7% females) were analyzed from the Nathan-Kline Institute – Rockland Sample database, a community-ascertained lifespan cohort with participants undergoing multimodal brain imaging and comprehensive behavioral, cognitive, and psychiatric assessments. This analysis is restricted to adults and uses well-validated questionnaires to assess gender role identity, personality traits, symptoms of anxiety and depression, and suicidal thoughts/behaviors. Results. Results revealed that having a gender role identity reversed to one's birth-assigned sex (i.e., feminine gender role in males and masculine gender role in females) was associated with poorer mental health (i.e., more anxiety and depressive symptoms). This effect was stronger in males where femininity was positively associated with more suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Further analyses revealed that only low-extroverted feminine males reported higher anxiety, and only high-neurotic feminine males reported higher suicidality. Conclusions. The present American study provides new understanding on gender role identity associations with mental health, while highlighting the importance of considering both birth-assigned sex and personality traits when studying gender role effects on psychiatric symptoms. We discuss the role of gendered traits and societal burden in relation to mental health.
Keywords: gender roles, personality traits, Anxiety, Depression, Suicide
Received: 17 Mar 2025; Accepted: 29 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Rossi, Arcand, Schmidt, Sandfort, Jean-Baptiste, Marin, Pantazatos and Juster. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Robert-Paul Juster, Montreal University, Montreal, Canada
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