About half of the high-school women (57.2%) in a 2021 survey year reported feeling persistently gloomy or hopeless, according to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey issued on Monday. Results are based on student responses to questionnaires sent to all US schools.
There is increased worry about being the victim of rape, further exacerbating feelings of depression and suicide.
This is a significant rise from 36% in 2011 and a far more considerable increase than that found among male students, whose response rate went from 21% to 29% over the same time period.
About one-third of adolescent females (30%) reported giving suicide an honest thought in the previous 12 months, according to the research.
This is a startling rise from the 19% found in 2011, and it contrasts sharply with the 13% seen in adolescent men, who will grow to 14% by 2021.
A quarter of adolescent females had formed a plan for suicide in the last year, and 13 percent have attempted suicide in the past year; both numbers are much higher than in 2011.
The psychologist and senior lecturer at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, Richard Weissbourd, said that females are more inclined to internalize externally experienced suffering like conflict, worry, and fear, whereas males are more likely to act aggressively as a result of their frustration with the world.
Girls may be more susceptible to social media pressure and society concerned with appearance and unattainable body types, while boys are more inclined to “hide sadness.”
Also, 14% of adolescent females reported being forced to engage in intercourse in2021, up from 12% in 2011, and 18% reported experiencing assault in 2021, up from 15% in 2011. The question of whether or not these occurrences were reported to authorities remains unanswered.
Although 5% of teenage girls claimed having suffered sexual violence, just 4% of teenage boys reported having been forced into intercourse.
Although 11% of teenage guys reported experiencing cyberbullying in the previous 12 months, 20% of teenage girls did.
Teenage girls also used alcohol at a higher rate than teenage boys did; 27% vs. 19%; marijuana at 18% against 14%; vaping items at 21% versus 15%; illegal substances at 15% versus 12%; and prescription opioids at 15% versus 10%. Even still, most of these figures were either the same or lower than those recorded in 2011.
