Depression rates for teen girls spikes in an age of cyber bullying
Depression is rising among young adults and adolescents in the U.S., with teenage girls in particular growing more depressed than boys, researchers found.
At the same time, mental health care isn't expanding to meet the challenge, resulting in a growing pool of young people with untreated depression, according to a study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
The findings suggest "fairly impressive increases in depression" and "should be of concern to parents, teachers, and pediatricians," said Mark Olfson, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center and a co-author of the study.
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"These trends support a renewed focus on outreach, early detection and intervention for depression in young people," he told Mashable.
Olfson said more research is needed to understand why young people are increasingly depressed.
But our tendency to replace smartphones and social media with face-to-face interactions might be playing a role, along with economic stress on families and shifting educational and job opportunities, he said.
Depression by the numbers
Every year, about 1 in 11 teenagers and young adults have a major depressive episode. The prevalence of these episodes has increased in the past decade, especially among 12-to-20-year-olds, researchers found.
Suicide is the second leading cause of death for that age group, after homicide, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For Monday's study, Olfson and his co-authors analyzed data on major depression and depression treatment in the National Surveys on Drug Use and Health for the years 2005-2014.
They looked at the results from over 172,000 teenagers, ages 12 to 17, and nearly 179,000 young adults, ages 18 to 25.
Among girls, the prevalence of major depressive episodes over a 12-month period rose from about 13 percent in 2005 to about 17 percent in 2014, according to the study.
Boys, by contrast, saw prevalence rise from 4 percent in 2005 to about 6 percent in 2014.
Researchers said it's not entirely clear why depression is increasing faster among girls. But other studies have also found that girls are more prone to depression and negative emotions than boys.
A UK report in August found that more than one-third of British girls said they were unhappy with the way they look, a 30-percent rise over five years. The proportion of boys who were unhappy with their appearance held flat, at 20 percent.
Children's Society, the charity that published the August report, noted that girls are more likely than boys to experience emotional bullying, such as name-calling.
"We're expected to be perfect, like Barbie dolls or something and if we don't then we get bullied," a middle school-aged girl, whose name was not provided, told Children's Society.
Monday's study in Pediatrics also cited cyber-bullying and "problematic mobile phone use" as reasons why girls might be seeing larger increases in depression.
Call for treatment
Olfson said the lack of definitive answers on why depression is rising is one of the study's limitations, as is the fact that the data was based entirely on self-reports by teenagers and young adults.
"Parents or teachers might have had different assessments of whether or not the young person was depressed," he said.
Still, medical experts not involved in the study said the new research "sounds an alarm" for families and doctors.
"Depression is a [sizable] and growing deadly threat to our U.S. adolescent population," wrote Anne Glowinski and Giuseppe D’Amelio, from Washington University in St. Louis, in a commentary that accompanied the study in Pediatrics.
"The prioritization of youth depression treatment of our U.S. population health is imperative."
If you want to talk to someone or are experiencing suicidal thoughts, text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. For international resources, this list is a good place to start.
Topics Mental Health
Maria Gallucci was a Science Reporter at Mashable. She was previously the energy and environment reporter at International Business Times; features editor of Makeshift magazine; clean economy reporter for InsideClimate News; and a correspondent in Mexico City until 2011. Maria holds degrees in journalism and Spanish from Ohio University's Honors Tutorial College.
