Daily life with depressive symptoms: Gender differences in adolescents' everyday emotional experiences

Allison Frost; Lindsay T Hoyt; Alissa Levy Chung; Emma K Adam

doi:10.1016/j.adolescence.2015.06.001

Daily life with depressive symptoms: Gender differences in adolescents' everyday emotional experiences

J Adolesc. 2015 Aug:43:132-41. doi: 10.1016/j.adolescence.2015.06.001. Epub 2015 Jun 21.

Authors

Allison Frost¹, Lindsay T Hoyt², Alissa Levy Chung³, Emma K Adam⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA. Electronic address: [email protected].
² The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Health and Society Scholars Program, University of California, San Francisco, and University of California, Berkeley, 3333 California Street, San Francisco, CA 94118, USA.
³ School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University, 2120 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
⁴ School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University, 2120 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208, USA; Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University, 2040 Sheridan Rd, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.

PMID: 26107805
DOI: 10.1016/j.adolescence.2015.06.001

Abstract

Depression is a prevalent and debilitating illness facing many adolescents, especially adolescent girls, whose risk for this disorder is approximately twice that of boys. Many studies have identified mechanisms that place girls at higher risk for depression during adolescence. Few, however, have examined differences in the everyday emotional experiences of boys and girls with varying levels of depressive symptoms. Using the Experience Sampling Method, this study investigated the roles of gender and depressive symptomatology in the emotional experiences of a community sample of youth (11-18 year-olds) from the Sloan 500 Family Study. Females with higher levels of depressive symptoms were more likely than females with fewer depressive symptoms and all males to experience strong negative emotions and to attribute the cause of these emotions to other people. These results suggest that emotional reactivity in interpersonal contexts is especially important to understand gender differences in the daily experience of depressive symptoms.

Keywords: Daily experiences; Depression; Emotion; Gender differences.

MeSH terms

Activities of Daily Living / psychology*
Adolescent
Adolescent Behavior / psychology*
Child
Depression / epidemiology
Depression / psychology*
Emotions*
Female
Humans
Male
Risk Factors
Sex Factors