Barcelona (EFE).- One in four adolescents has low spirits, double that of boys, according to research by the inter-university group Epi4Health from the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), the Manresa campus of the University of Vic (UVIC-UCC) and the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), after analyzing data from more than 6,000 students in Catalonia.
According to the study, in global numbers, 18.6% of adolescents claim to have a low mood, but it is girls, 25.5%, who suffer the most from this discouragement. Among boys, the percentage is 11.6%.
The research, published by the journal ‘Journal of Affective Disorders’led by Helena González-Casals, UVic-UCC researcher and UOC PhD student in the Health and Psychology program under the direction of Marina Bosque, researcher of the Epi4health group, and Albert Espelt, of the UAB.
More than 6,000 adolescents
“We have verified gender inequalities in mental health among adolescents, with low mood 2.2 times more frequent among girls than among boys, and 36% of this difference is explained by social determinants and behaviors related to the health”, Bosque summarized.
The research has been based on data from the project DESKcohorta survey on health behaviors that is repeated every two years in public and private institutes in central Catalonia since the 2019-2020 academic year and that has collected data from 6,428 adolescents between 12 and 18 years of age.
According to the researchers, these differences between genders are explained by contextual factors related to mood, such as the sexual violence suffered by girls or the fact that adolescent girls spend less time doing physical activity than boys.
In addition, according to the study, being an immigrant, dieting and smoking tobacco daily is also associated with a low mood only in girls, while risky alcohol consumption is only associated in boys.
The researchers have also observed a higher prevalence of low mood in both boys and girls with a disadvantaged socioeconomic situation and that getting lower grades, abusing the mobile phone or being bullied are other associated factors that do not seem to have gender differences. .
sexual violence
Most of the gender difference in the prevalence of low mood is due to having experienced sexual violence.
According to the authors of the study, these results can be useful for doing preventive work and detecting discomforts and symptoms before they worsen or become chronic and go from a low mood to more severe disorders, such as anxiety or depression.
“Now we can know the current situation regarding the mental health of the adolescent group and see what factors are related to it, and this allows us to think and develop preventive actions aimed at improving the mental health of this group that are more complete and have an impact older”, highlighted Helena González-Casals.
According to the researchers, the results of the work can be extrapolated since adolescents from cities such as Manresa or Igualada have participated, but also from smaller towns.
“We can get an approximate idea of what happens in other populations and extrapolate the results of this study to the rest of the adolescent population,” said González-Casals, who pointed out that in large cities, such as Barcelona, where there are large differences between neighborhoods and socioeconomic levels, this behavior may be different.
The data for this research was collected during the 2019-2020 academic year, until the confinement due to COVID-19 forced the interruption of the field work.
As the pandemic has affected the mental health of adolescents, the Epi4Health team is currently analyzing data from the second wave of the project. DESKcohort (collected during the 2021-2022 academic year), to explore in detail what changes have occurred in the mental health of this group as a result of the pandemic.