Men's mental health in context: gendered pathways linking early-life hardships to adult depression and life satisfaction compared with women

Background: Early-life hardships and traumatic events are strong predictors of adult mental health. Yet little is known about how these experiences shape men’s mental health compared with women’s in East Asia, where rapid social change and entrenched gender norms intersect. This study focuses on men’s vulnerabilities to acute, identity-disrupting hardships such as parental bereavement and school dropout, versus women’s greater exposure to chronic relational adversities including poverty and caregiving instability. Methods: Using 12 waves (2011–2022) of the Korean Welfare Panel Study (KoWePS, N = 8658), random-effects panel regressions estimated the long-term effects of five early-life hardships—parental death, parental divorce, school dropout, kinship caregiving, and extreme poverty—on adult life satisfaction and depression, controlling for income, marital status, alcohol use, and residence. Results: School dropout was a major turning point undermining men’s role identity, while extreme poverty and parental divorce more strongly predicted women’s depression. Kinship caregiving affected both genders, revealing partial convergence in vulnerability. Conclusions: Men’s cumulative disadvantage arises mainly from acute, identity-threatening hardships, whereas women’s vulnerability builds through chronic adversity. Findings highlight the need for trauma-informed, gender-sensitive mental health interventions that recognize men’s often hidden but severe risks.