Regardless of gender, youth who enter puberty ahead of their peers are at a heightened risk of anxiety, conflict with friends and family, social problems, and other problems associated with depression, according to a groundbreaking new study by a psychology professor at the University of Illinois.
The study by Karen D. Rudolph and her colleagues is one of the first research projects to confirm that early puberty heightens the risk of depression for both sexes—albeit in a different way for boys and girls—and to explain the underlying mechanisms.
Researchers analyzed the onset of puberty and tracked levels of depression among more than 160 youth over a four-year period. During their early teenage years, the youth in the study completed annual questionnaires and interviews, and parents also reported on their children’s social relationships and any difficulties they were having.
The research revealed that early maturation triggers an array of psychological, social-behavioral, and interpersonal problems that predict elevated levels of depression in boys and girls several years later.
“It is often believed that going through puberty earlier than peers only contributes to depression in girls,” Rudolph says. “We found that early maturation can also be a risk for boys as they progress through adolescence, but the timing is different than in girls.”
Levels of depression among early maturing girls were elevated at the beginning of the study and remained so during the next three years. Early maturing girls faced adverse effects even as peers caught up to them in physical development, Rudolph says.
“In girls, early maturation seems to trigger immediate psychological and environmental risks and consequent depression,” Rudolph says. “Pubertal changes cause early maturing girls to feel badly about themselves, cope less effectively with social problems, affiliate with deviant peers, enter riskier and more stressful social contexts, and experience disruption and conflict within their relationships.”
Contrary to girls, early maturing boys in the study did not appear to have these immediate adverse effects. They displayed significantly lower levels of depression at the outset than females, but by the end of the fourth year the level of depression suffered by early maturing boys was about the same as that in early maturing girls.
“While early maturation seemed to protect boys from the challenges of puberty initially, boys experienced an emerging cascade of personal and contextual risks—negative self-image, anxiety, social problems and interpersonal stress—that eventuated in depression as they moved through adolescence,” Rudolph says.
“It’s important to note,” she adds, “as we find in our work, that only some teens are vulnerable to the effects of early maturation, particularly those with more disruption in their families and less support in their peer relationships.”
