Original articlePeer Stressors and Gender Differences in Adolescents' Mental Health: The TRAILS Study
Section snippets
Sample
Subjects were participants of the “TRacking Adolescents' Individual Lives Survey” (TRAILS), a prospective cohort study of Dutch adolescents, aimed at explaining the development of mental health from preadolescence into adulthood. The TRAILS study was approved by the Central Committee on Research Involving Human Subjects (Dutch CCMO). Sample selection involved five municipalities in the North of the Netherlands, including both urban and rural areas. The five municipalities were requested to give
Descriptive statistics
The rate of friendship loss was higher in girls than in boys. Girls also reported more romantic breakups than boys. Being the victim of bullying and sexual harassment did not differ significantly between the genders. However, boys reported more physical violence and girls reported more negative gossip (Table 1). Girls reported significantly more peer victimization at school and relationship losses than boys, although the mean differences were small. Girls had more internalizing problems,
Main findings
In this study, we examined possible gender differences in the effect of peer victimization at school and peer-related relationship losses on two types of mental health problems, that is, internalizing and externalizing problems. We hypothesized that boys' mental health would be more affected by peer victimization at school, whereas the mental health of girls would be more affected by relationship losses. In addition, we hypothesized that peer victimization at school and relationship losses were
Implications and Conclusion
To the best of our knowledge, this study was the first to examine two plausible explanations for gender differences in mental health because of peer stressors in a large prospective population cohort of Dutch young adolescents.
An important result of this study is that gender per se does not predispose adolescents to either internalizing or externalizing problems in response to peer stress. Whether adolescents react to stressful events by developing internalizing or externalizing problems does
Acknowledgments
This research is part of the TRacking Adolescents' Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS). Participating centers of TRAILS include various departments of the University Medical Center and University of Groningen, the Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam, the University of Utrecht, the Radboud Medical Center Nijmegen, and the Trimbos Institute, all in the Netherlands. Principal investigators are Professor Dr. J. Ormel (University Medical Center Groningen) and Professor Dr. F.C. Verhulst
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