A Third of Teen Girls Experience Depression: What Moms Can Do
Have you ever wondered if your daughter was depressed? If you have, you’re not alone.
A large new study recently came out in the journal Translational Psychiatry reveals that 13.6 percent of boys and a staggering 36.1 percent of girls have been or are depressed. That’s one out of three teenage girls!
Is their anything parents can do about this new alarming trend?
First, you need to understand depression is not just biological. You can have a biological vulnerability for depression and not be depressed. However, when you combine a biological vulnerability with environmental influences (lots of stress) there is a much greater risk for depression.
Parents can dial down the depression by monitoring the environmental factors.
According to the Washington Post interview with Joshua Breslau, a senior researcher in the division of health for RAND and lead author of the study, “Among the standard questions asked are ones about insomnia, irritability, and feelings of guilt or worthlessness that researchers used to “diagnose” survey participants with depression using diagnostic criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Through the survey, they were able to capture a broader group of children than those who have a formal diagnosis and who may be in treatment.”
Let’s explore insomnia, irritability, and feelings of guilt or worthlessness and how that interfaces with the culture of teenage girls.
It’s hard for a teenage girl to get enough sleep. You tell your daughter it’s time for bed but she says she needs to study for her history test. This may pose a dilemma. You may feel you have to choose between your daughter’s getting a good night’s sleep or passing her test, and most often sleep loses. This is because many of our teens have schedules packed with afterschool activities. This causes their homework and social life to be pushed back into the late-night hours which has produced a culture of sleep-deprived teens.
Sleep deprivation has many negative consequences. First, it decreases serotonin, one of the “feel-good” chemicals in the brain, and increases the stress hormone cortisol, which in turn increases mood volatility. This leads to mood swings, irritability, and depression that create over-the-top reactions to situations. James E. Gangwisch and his colleagues from Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Department of Psychiatry, found that teenagers who routinely went to bed after midnight were 24 percent more likely to be depressed than those who got to sleep by 10 P.M. or earlier. They also found that teenagers who regularly sleep five or fewer hours are 71 percent more likely to report depression.
What parents can do
- Convince your daughter to calm down before bedtime. Unplug from electronics– including cell phones, video games, TV, and chatting on the computer–an hour before bed.
- Monitor her cell phone and computer use. Take her phone and laptop at night so she won’t be tempted to chat with her friends, especially if she is a younger teen.
- Let her sleep in on the weekend to catch up on her rest.
- Educate your daughter about sleep deprivation and the benefits of sleep.
Our girls are under more pressure than ever before. Girls feel the pressure to look the right way and have the right jeans, shoes, dress, underwear, hair products, phone, computer, and nail polish. They feel the pressure to have the right grades, friends, and boyfriend, and to get into the right college.
Parents feel this pressure too, and unknowingly pass their pressure onto their daughter’s saying things like. “Don’t you care about your grades? Do you even want to go to college?”
Teenage girls are trying to survive in a harsh competitive culture. The standards are set so high, no girl can achieve them, for example what girl can measure up to the photo-shopped models in all the magazines. This is a breeding ground for shame.
Another reason there is so much pressure is because of overbooked schedules. Girls don’t have any downtime, which is why they