P3 Explain patterns and trends in health and illness among different social groupings

Gender
Men and women have different levels of risks of getting mental illnesses such as alcohol dependency. This is “more than twice as high in men than women. In developed countries, approximately 1 in 5 men and 1 in 12 women develop alcohol dependence during their lives” WHO 2015. This clearly shows that men and women have different risks when it comes to health and illness. Men are also twice as likely to have personality disorders, but women are more likely to have anxiety and depression than men are. Women have more accounts of sexual harassment and rape and this has a knock on effect to the amount of people with depression.
Social class
Different social classes have different levels of financial stability, which is also directly linked to the health care that is available and the housing and area in which they live. People in the lower class have higher levels of illness and bad health, as they cannot afford private healthcare so would then have to wait for appointments and go to public hospitals where they may be very busy and have a low amount of appointments available. Also people from the lower class may not be eating as well as others as they are on a strict budget this means they may be missing certain vitamins and minerals from their diet. Eating cheap microwave meals and processed food is not as good as eating fresh meals and organic fruit and vegetables. Table – poverty.org 2015. As you can see in this table four types of diseases are more common in lower class societies.
In middle and higher classes the illness rate is lower and less diseases as they have the money to look after themselves better as they can go to private hospitals or afford to travel to better public hospitals for specialist treatment. Also they can afford to eat healthily and go to a gym