Gender differences in adolescent stress responses and risk-taking behavior

Stress and Depression Among Adolescents

What are the common causes of stress and depression among American adolescents? What is the relationship between stress and depression in young people? How does the conflict between adolescents and their parents contribute to stress? These and other questions will be addressed in this paper.

Stress among Adolescents

An article in the journal Social Forces studied 599 adolescents to determine how much stress can be blamed on "daily hassles" and "experimentally induced cardiovascular reactivity" -- in terms of offering an explanation for adolescent self-esteem and risk taking. In other words, is risk-taking by adolescents directly related to stress? Is it related to increased cardiovascular reactivity? If researchers can answer those questions, author Hans Vermeersch asserts, it may be that scholars can gain an increased understanding of the "variability in the outcomes of stressors" (Vermeersch, et al., 2010, p. 63). And moreover, this research sought to determine -- through a biosocial approach -- to explain gender differences between adolescents in terms of internalizing and externalizing their adjustments to the stressors of daily life.

The authors embrace Pearlin's stress process model, which posits that the number of stressful life situations a person experiences is based on a person's position in the social system, and can lead to mental health problems. In Pearlin's model, stress and the process of becoming stressful is related to "structural inequalities." The other model used in this research is Agnew's general strain theory, which relates to strain by explaining that when an adolescent fails to "achieve positively valued goals"; or finds that a "valued stimuli" is missing; or is presented with a "negatively valued stimuli" he or she experiences strain and externalizes that strain through "delinquency and risk-taking" (Vermeersch, p. 63).

The article points to "vulnerability" as an important component in understanding the level of stress that an adolescent may experience. Certainly it can be expected that some groups of adolescents will be more vulnerable to certain types of stressors than other groups. Meanwhile, on page 67 the research reveals the adolescent girls experience more "communal stressors" like daily / life hassles that are connected with "interpersonal relationships, caring, friendship and love," and that includes stressors related to family and within friendship networks. Adolescent boys, meantime, experience more "agency-level stressors" including hassles in life that are linked to "the pursuit or loss of achievement, mastery, status and power" (Vermeersch).

The bottom line in this research is that behavioral outcomes (levels of stress) are dependent on two things: the presence of "environmental stressors" and the individual differences in responses to stress ("stress reactivity") (Vermeersch, 73). And high cardiovascular reactivity in combination with "a distressing social environment" is an "important pathway to increased risk-taking" with both genders of adolescents. Girls experience stressors related to relationship with others, particularly the family and intimate friends, and boys experienced more stressors and they are related to "lack of autonomy, financial dependency and conflict-ridden relationships with teachers at school" (Vermeersch, 74).

Exposure to stressors during a person's adolescence can lead to "increases in both emotional and behavioral problems" and the stress that accompanies increased behavioral problems "can exacerbate adolescents' risk for developing drug dependence" (King, et al., 2008). Some adolescent stress is related to "compulsory school attendance," and some stress is related to "self-reported experiences" by adolescents engaged in "smoking" and "the use of alcohol and other drugs," according to research in Stress and Health (Byrne, et al., 1999, p. 215).

Statistics -- Adolescent Stress -- 70% say they are Stressed Out

A survey of adolescents at Marlborough High School in Massachusetts showed "A whopping 70%" say they are "stressed out" (Bradley, 2002). The survey used a model from the Centers for Disease Control and a grant from the state Department of Education's Safe and Drug Free Community; 815 students, grades 9 through 12, participated. Sixteen percent of respondents (in the "Youth Risk Behavior Survey") say they have "considered suicide," and Health Educator Nancy Klein said stressors in her high school include "substance abuse, suicide" and "eating problems" along with family and peer group-related stressors.

Parents -- Adolescents

Above and beyond parental setting of rules -- and the conflict that may result from those imposed guidelines -- variations in "parental use of reason" can help explain the frequency and intensity of conflict in the family, according to Nadia Sorkhabi, writing in Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal. Parent-adolescent conflicts can be avoided, the author insists, when there is a sense of reason present in the dynamic; e.g., when the adolescent is given a "participatory role" in family decision making it can lead to more than just a stable and peaceful coexistence at home. When there is a constructive "bilateral" plan in effect for decision making, compared with "unilateral parental decision making," that situation is associated with "positive developmental outcomes" leading to "academic competence, psychosocial development, self-esteem, and intrinsic motivation," Sorkhabi explains on page 762. Additional positive outcomes associated with bilateral parent-adolescent decision making include: a) fewer instances of juvenile delinquency; b) less social deviance; and c) reduced "susceptibility to negative peer pressure" (Sorkhabi, 2010, p. 762).

In this research, Sorkhabi discovered that neither the mother nor the adolescent considers "maternal regulation of the personal domain" of the adolescent "as an intrusive that violates adolescents' sense of personal control" (p. 772). However, paternal regulation of household domains "explained unique variance in conflict frequency above and beyond the way fathers construct rules and use reason when there is parent-adolescent disagreement" (Sorkhabi, 772).

Depression and Adolescence

The problem isn't necessarily determining whether adolescents experience depression -- they certainly do. In fact estimates run as high as 20% in terms of the percentage of adolescents that will experience a "depressive disorder" while in their teens (Pereira, et al., 2010, p. 643). The problem is that "less than half of depressed adolescents are diagnosed or treated," Pereira explains. In this article the author reports that adolescents with depressive disorders are at "elevated risk" for more than just poor social interactions, troubles at school and bad family experiences. Indeed Pereira asserts that adolescents with depression issues are at elevated risk of "substance abuse, early pregnancy, hospitalization, recurrent episodes of depression, and suicide" (Pereira, 643).

The data from the research in this piece shows that 13% of 271 adolescents surveyed have "seriously contemplated suicide" and within the year previous to the survey 6.5% of those 271 adolescents had made an attempt to kill themselves (Pereira, 643). Using the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ)-9 and the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (DISC-W), the researchers also zeroed in on 228 adolescent respondents (with scores that indicated the need for further investigation of their depressive tendencies); of those, the majority had "other mental health problems." Those issues included depressive symptoms that didn't meet the criteria for "major depression"; an episode of "major depression" within the past year; "significant psychosocial impairment"; and "clinically significant anxiety symptoms" (Pereira, 644).

Prolonged exposure to Stressful events for Adolescents -- Therapy

How well to adolescents cope with stressful events that are prolonged? Researcher Carolyn Garcia reviewed 367 articles -- among them 104 empirical articles -- and a good definition of "coping" could be found in fewer than half of those articles, Garcia writes, in the Journal of Nursing Scholarship. The suggestion is that not enough emphasis in the literature has been placed on coping strategies, but surely adolescents that learn to cope (through therapy and counseling) can handle the problems associated with prolonged stressful conditions in their lives.

Adolescents with poor problem-solving skills are at greater risk of suicide, according to an article in the Journal of Clinical Psychology (Grover, et al., 2009). The authors concentrate on the problem of "chronic stress" in adolescents, saying it involves "deprivation or disadvantage" that is ongoing and those dynamics create a "continuous stream of threats and challenges" for the adolescent. The therapy in this research? Counselors, therapists, parents and teachers all need to help adolescents learn "well-developed problem-solving abilities" in order to "buffer the negative impact of both episodic and chronic stress…" (Grover, p. 1286).

Conclusion

Earlier in this paper it was asserted that up to 20% of adolescents in the U.S. will encounter some form of depression due to stress. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) suggests that the best treatment for severely depressed youths is a combination of psychotherapy and antidepressant medication; that formula works better than either one of those treatments alone. Depression is a serious health problem and what this paper has pointed out as well is that healthcare professionals diagnose only a relatively small percentage of adolescents that are depressed. The reasons for this lack of diagnosis are several, but the bottom line is that in order for schools and parents to assure their children are not suffering from a chronic illness like depression, due to a myriad of kinds of stressors (well documented in this paper), testing must be made available to schools and must be conducted by trained personnel.