I'd be depressed as a motherfucker if I had to live in Utah!

I'm more inclined to think this is the most likely cause. At least I think this is true of Christians I know, including my parents. They use God to handle all this absolute shit that’s gone on in their life.

“God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” -- John Lennon

Me too, but Utah is worth visiting. It’s a very beautiful state, especially in the Fall.

Its also known as Seasonal Affective Disorder or some such jargon. I often get it pretty bad. Even though I can get depressed at other times of year its never as bad as in winter. Yes, I'm not really the most shining example of an atheist living a good, happy life - mind you I'd probably be worse off if I was religious.

That would be an incredibly stupid and sad thing for a christian to say.I can totally picture one saying it.

It'd be a pretty bad selling line though."Join our religion so you can be depressed becasue god thinks you're worthless." Not that catchy..

I've heard Calvinists say things similar to that. Though in our favor, the effort to rebrand christianity as a means of happiness in this world shows that they've acknowledged the superiority of our values in a back-handed way.

There are at least two sides to this.  First, depression is more common in women, and women are currently, and have been historically, more religious than men.  However, correlation is not causation.  We do not know, for instance whether women have turned to religion because of a gender-specific predisposition or because they have historically needed a comforting belief more than men since they have been disenfranchised for most of the time that humans have had religion.  As for depression, it does appear that women are biologically more susceptible to depression because their bodies produce  hormones in different ways than men.  Establishing causal relationships between religion, depression, and gender, would be a very difficult task, though.

I certainly hope this data is not ignored for fear of being called misogynistic.

I'll ignore the question about god.

The statistics are telling us something, but it's really hard to tell what without more data.

The problem is, we've never seen (and never will see, for very sound evolutionary reasons) a completely egalitarian society.  Women are correct.  They get the shit end of the stick when it comes to childbearing and parental responsibility.  The thing is, whenever a society grants them the opportunity to eschew motherhood for a more 'male' life, they choose motherhood overwhelmingly.  Natural selection is not fair.

Society is discriminatory because natural selection cares more about the baby being born and raised than the mother's level of satisfaction.  Whatever selection pressure created a propensity for depression in women served a purpose that was more evolutionarily important.  I'm not familiar enough with the current theories on this to say more.

Now that I've got all the science disclaimers out of the way, here's my educated guess on the matter.  Women do get depressed more than men, for whatever combination of social and biological reasons.  Religion offers a tempting bandaid, so it's not surprising that women turn to religion more than men.  Mormonism is a particularly sexist religion, requiring complete submission by the wife.  It is not surprising that Mormon women would be depressed more often.  Depression is, after all, often based on circumstances, not mental disorder.  Finally, in America, and in the world historically, women have been either discouraged or disallowed from attaining high levels of education.  Atheism and education go hand in hand.  A typical Mormon woman is not well educated.  Again, low education, low social status, and biological predisposition to depression are all present.  We should not be shocked that the results are predictable.

"But there is always the possiblity of a common cause. Perhaps depressed people are more likely to turn to religion. If that's the case, it sure doesn't look like Mormonism cures the problem." - EXC

   I think depressed people do turn to religion thinking a "relationship with god" will be some kind of magical cure for what ales them.  I think some Cults/religions even take advantage of this by advertising books or other items directly towards people who are depressed and look for recruits where you are more likely to find people suffering from depression. 

   I'm not sure if this is the case in for women in Utah since a lot of the depressed women here in Utah have been Mormon their entire life.  Since I have never been a Mormon but live in Utah among the Mormons I may not know everything there is about the Mormon faith but, there seems to be a lot of pressure to be the "perfect mother" among the Mormon faithful as well as pressure to perform additional church duties for both Men and Women.  I imagine this would be hard for Mormon women since they are also expected to balance being a mother, their career, and these additional church duties.  Back in the 80s, Utah also had one of the highest suicide rates in the country so it isn't too much of a surprise that Utah has been named the most depressed state.   I remember some mental health groups attributing the high suicide rate in Utah to the Mormon lifestyle-there may be some truth to this.  Utah County is often called "Happy Valley" because of it's higher Mormon concentration but Utah County is no different than neighboring counties when it comes to problems like depression and drug abuse.  In fact, I think Utah county may be worse than neighboring counties.  There are a lot of Meth users and prescription drug abusers in Utah County and interestingly a lot of them are mothers. 

This is just my take on this,

Marc