Risk of Depression Eating Disorders Suicide Among Girls

It can be tough to be a kid – really tough. And for girls, the challenges of youth appear to be intensifying, as evidenced by rising rates of depression, suicide, eating disorders, and self-injury.

A new book by an expert in child and adolescent psychology and developmental psychopathology argues that pressures to overachieve are leading to this host of troubling outcomes among girls.

In The Triple Bind, Stephen Hinshaw, Ph.D. (a professor and chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley) notes that a wide range of issues, increasingly over-scheduled lives, the rise of the cyber-culture, and the continued media-fueled sexualization of young girls is having a devastating impact:

In many ways, today is the best time in history to be a girl: Opportunities for a girl’s success are as unlimited as her dreams. Yet an alarm is sounding, revealing a disturbing portrait of the stresses affecting girls of all ages.

Societal expectations, cultural trends, and conflicting messages are creating what psychologist and researcher Stephen Hinshaw calls "the triple bind.” Girls are now expected to excel at "girl skills,” achieve "boy goals,” and be models of female perfection 100 percent of the time.

The triple bind is putting more and more girls at risk for aggression, eating disorders, depression, and even suicide.

A Feb. 10 UC Berkeley press release explained that the book's title is "a play on 'double bind,' a term coined by 1950s social scientists who studied the effects of the conflicting messages conveyed to children by grownups."

Stress-Related Statistics

In an excerpt from The Triple Bind that was posted Feb. 10 on the "Today" section of the MSNBC website, Hinshaw supports his thesis about the troubling state of young girls today by presenting the following statistics:

• Up to 20 percent of girls between the ages of 10 and 19 are experiencing (or have experienced) symptoms that are consistent with major depression.
• Between 2003 and 2004, the suicide rate among girls ages 10 to 14 rose by 76 percent; among girls ages 15 to 19, the suicide rate rose by 32 percent.
• Girls’ rates of aggression and violence have been on the rise during the previous 15 years.
• Experts estimate that between 5 and 10 percent of teen girls and young adult women in the United States are suffering from some form of eating disorder (including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder).
• Cases of self-mutilation (activities that include cutting, burning, biting, and other forms of self-injury) appear to be increasing among teen girls.

"These figures add up to a staggering sum," the excerpt continues. "At least one-fourth of all U.S. teenage girls are suffering from self-mutilation, eating disorders, significant depression, or serious consideration of suicide – or are perpetrating acts of physical violence."

Harassment and Abuse

Added to the success-related pressures that many young girls experience today, female students also endure staggeringly high levels of sexual harassment and abuse.

In a paper titled "It’s Not Easy Being a Girl in a Man’s World: The Daily Experience of Sexual Harassment for Adolescent Girls," Christia Spears Brown (an assistant professor of developmental psychology at UCLA) reports the following about the prevalence of sexual harassment and abuse faced by female students:

• More than half of all girls have been called a nasty or demeaning name or teased about their appearance by a male.
• By the end of high school, one in four girls has been teased, threatened, or bullied by a male, and half of all female students have been touched or grabbed against their wishes by a male.
• Most girls describe themselves as becoming angry, anxious, and embarrassed after being sexually harassed. Older adolescents also report being worried or scared, and feeling guilty.

Spears reports that many girls who are abused and harassed in school either "laugh off" or downplay the effects of the abuse, which can increase the likelihood of inner conflict within the female victim while also conveying the unintentional message to perpetrators and witnesses that the harassment isn't really "a big deal."

But it is a big deal: Experiencing abuse during childhood has been associated with a number of damaging effects later in life, including substance abuse, depression, and suicide.

Helping Young Girls

A May 13 post on US News & World Report's "On Parenting" blog notes that teen depression is vastly under-diagnosed and untreated in the United States. One of the reasons for this lack of service, blogger Nancy Shute noted, may be that there are currently about 7,400 child and adolescent psychiatrists in the nation, which works out to about one for every 10,000 children.

But child psychiatry isn't the only option for parents of young girls who are suffering from depression, eating disorders, substance abuse, or self-harm.

For example, New Leaf Academy (a private boarding school for girls ages 10 to 14) provides a comprehensive program of academic instruction and therapeutic support that is designed to meet the developmental, social, emotional, and academic needs of pre-adolescent and young adolescent girls.

And in Rimrock, Arizona, Copper Canyon Academy offers academic and therapeutic residential care for girls and young women (ages 14 to 17). Focused on addressing the emotional, mental, physical, spiritual, and social development needs of female students, Copper Canyon Academy is designed to help girls who are struggling with inadequate self-esteem, self-confidence, self-awareness, self-reliance, and self-management.

Regardless of the path parents choose to take to provide their daughters with appropriate academic and therapeutic support, it is essential to remember that the challenges they face are more than harmless phases or rites of passage.

Being a kid is far from easy, and being a parent is no walk in the park, either. But if you're in it together, the results can be remarkable.