Relationship problems can damage teen girls’ mental health

张文

A new study surprised researchers, finding that for adolescent girls, romantic relationship problems can have serious, negative implications for their mental health.
“I found that girls’ risk of severe depression, thoughts of suicide, and suicide attempt increase the more their relationships diverge from what they imagined,” said the study’s author Brian Soller, Ph.D., an assistant professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico.
“Conversely, I found no evidence that romantic relationship inauthenticity —which captures the extent to which relationships unfold in ways that are inconsistent with how adolescents think or feel they should —contributes to poor mental health among boys.”
Soller used data from more than 5,300 high school students from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. From this data set he examined the mental health consequences of mismatches between adolescents’ ideal and actual relationships.
The study appears in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.
Soller measured relationship inauthenticity by comparing how adolescents described their ideal relationship in an initial interview with how their first relationship after the interview actually played out.
“In the initial interview, researchers provided adolescents with a number of cards describing events that often occur within relationships, including everything from hand-holding and kissing to sex,” Soller said.
Respondents kept cards describing events they would engage in within an ideal relationship, and then indicated the order in which the events would occur.
Roughly a year later, the respondents repeated the exercise, only this time they indicated which events took place within their relationship, and then provided the order in which the events transpired.
During both interviews, researchers asked participants about their mental health.
As for why relationship inauthenticity increased the risk of mental health problems for girls, but not for boys, Soller said, “Romantic relationships are particularly important components of girls’ identities and are, therefore, strongly related to how they feel about themselves —good or bad.
“As a result, relationships that diverge from what girls envision for themselves are especially damaging to their emotional well-being.”
On the other hand, Soller said relationships are not as important to boys’ identities.
“Boys may be more likely to build their identities around sports or other extracurricular activities, so this could be why they are not affected by relationship inauthenticity,” he said.
In terms of the study’s policy implications, Soller said parents, educators, and policymakers should think about how to help girls construct identities that are less closely tied to romantic involvement.
“Helping girls build their identities around things other than romantic relationships may mitigate the effects of relationship inauthenticity on their mental health,” he said.
Soller also suggested that creating programs and interventions aimed at providing adolescents with tools to help them better control how the events in their relationships play out may lead to romances that enhance adolescent mental health and other developmental outcomes.
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据心理学网站psychcentral报道，一项新的研究震惊了研究者。研究发现对青春期的少女来说，感情问题对她们的精神健康会产生严重的负面影响。
“我发现，女孩有严重抑郁症的风险，自杀的想法和企图在增加，因为更多的关系偏离她们的想象。”该研究的作者布瑞恩·索勒博士说。他是新墨西哥大学的社会学助理教授。
“相反，我发现没有证据表明恋爱关系的真实性——抓住了何种程度的关系的展现方式是与青少年的想法或感觉不一致的——这有助于心理健康状况不佳的男孩。”
索勒的研究资料来自国家青少年健康的纵向研究的5300多所高中的学生。从这个数据中，他检查了青少年的理想和现实之间关系的不匹配的心理健康的影响。
这项研究发表在《健康与社会行为》杂志上。
索勒通过把青少年在最初的面试中怎样描述他们的理想关系与面试结束后他们的第一次恋爱是怎样作对比，来测量关系的不真实性。
“在最初的测试中，研究者们提供青少年许多带有描述经常会出现在恋爱中的事情的卡片，这是事情小到牵手大到接吻”，索勒说。
被研究者保留那些带有他们理想恋爱关系中想要拥有事情的卡片，这会预示事件出现的顺序。
在面试中，研究者询问被研究者的精神健康问题。
对于为什么恋爱关系的不真实性增加了女孩产生精神问题的风险，而对男孩却没有影响。索勒说“恋爱关系是女孩特性的特别重要的组成，因此，与她们对自己感觉如何有很重要的关联——好或者不好”。
“因此，那种偏离她们渴望的恋爱关系尤其损害她们的精神健康”。
另一方面，索勒说，恋爱对男孩来说没有那么重要。
“男孩更加有可能发展他们在运动或者其他业余活动上的特性，所以这可能是为什么他们不被恋爱的不真实性影响的原因”他说。
按照研究策略表示，索勒说父母，教育工作者，政策制定者应该考虑如何帮助女孩构建与恋爱无关或与恋爱少有关联的特性。
“帮助女孩发展她们在其他事情上的兴趣而不是恋爱可以缓和恋爱的不真实性对她们精神健康的影响”，他说。
索勒建议创建程序和干预措施，旨在为青少年提供工具，帮助他们更好地控制她们关系的进展可能会促进青少年的心理健康和其他成长成果。