The main aims of this study were to explore the differences between seven Egyptian clinical and non-clinical samples in death depression, as well as to estimate gender-related differences.
A cross-sectional study.
The Death Depression Scale (DDS) was administered to seven groups (N = 765) of Egyptian normal (non-clinical) patients, anxiety outpatients, schizophrenic inpatients (men and women) and addicts (men only) in individual sessions.
Anxiety outpatients of both sexes obtained significantly and greatly higher death depression scores than did the other five groups, whereas the male schizophrenics, the male addicts, and the male and female non-clinical groups had the lowest death depression scores. Female schizophrenics obtained a significantly higher death depression scores than did male schizophrenics, addicts and non-clinical participants. Female anxiety outpatients and schizophrenics had higher death depression mean scores than did their male counterparts.
The present finding is consistent, in general, with previous studies on death anxiety and death obsession. What applied to death anxiety was consistent also with death depression and death obsession. That is, the death distress concept.

Previous research has shown gender-related psychobiological differences in risky and competitive strategies that affect win and loss outcomes. In addition, some studies have found differences in the decision-making process, with women taking longer to reach the same performance as men. However, the underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. The present study aimed to investigate gender differences in behavioral performance and neural correlates during a decision-making task, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). Forty healthy young adults (23 men and 17 women) performed the IGT while the feedback-related negativity (FRN) and P3 were recorded as neural correlates of feedback processing. No gender differences were observed in the behavioral performance on the IGT after 100 and 150 trials, or in the P3 component. In women, but not in men, the FRN component showed a greater amplitude for losses than for wins. There were no significant gender-related differences in behavioral performance, and men and women revealed a similar learning process on the IGT. At the neural level, no direct differences between men and women were observed in the feedback processing stage for the FRN or P3. However, our results indicate that women showed greater sensitivity to losses than to wins during the decision-making task, as reflected in the FRN component.