Puberty, Status and Depression in Girls--论文代写范文

尽管来自较低的社会经济家庭，女孩显示抑郁症的整体水平较高,他们的症状也与遗传或环境相关。青春期是一个关键的时间点。下面的essay代写范文进行论述。

Abstract 
  In the current study, we tested for gene × environment interactions in the association between pubertal timing and adolescent depression by examining how socioeconomic factors might moderate age at menarche’s relation with depressive symptoms. Participants comprised 630 female twin and sibling pairs from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Consistent with previous studies, results showed that genetic predispositions toward later menarche were associated with fewer depressive symptoms and that genetic predispositions toward earlier menarche were associated with more depressive symptoms. However, this pattern was subtle and evident only in girls from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. Although girls from lower socioeconomic families showed the highest overall levels of depression, their symptoms appeared unrelated to timing of physical development through either a genetic or an environmental path. 
Keywords puberty, menarche, poverty, depression, gene × environment interactions

  Puberty represents a pivotal time for affective difficulties for girls. The striking discrepancy in depression rates between males and females first emerges during this transition, with girls’ internalizing and poor self-esteem typically increasing during the course of puberty (Cyranowski, Frank, Young, & Shear, 2000). Although puberty presents social and emotional challenges for all girls, individual differences in maturation play a key role; girls who mature ahead of peers are at particularly high risk for depression (e.g., Mendle, Turkheimer, & Emery, 2007). This correlation is complicated by two factors. First, both depression and pubertal timing are heritable. Second, both depression and earlier pubertal timing have been associated with socioeconomic disadvantage. In the present study, we investigate gene × environment (G × E) interactions in these associations. Specifically, we examine how girls’ socioeconomic background may moderate the genetic and environmental pathways between age at menarche and adolescent depressive symptoms.

 Puberty and Depression in Adolescent Girls 
  Early maturing girls are psychologically vulnerable. Compared with later developing peers, early maturers are more likely to exhibit internalizing symptoms (Graber, Lewinsohn, Seeley, & Brooks-Gunn, 1997), to meet criteria for a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., DSM–IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) diagnosis of major depression (Stice, Presnall, & Bearman, 2001), and to attempt suicide (Graber et  al., 1997; Wichstrøm, 2000). These findings remain robust across a broad range of measurement methods for both puberty and depression, which suggests that early puberty in girls is both “uniquely associated with substantial risk” (Graber, Nichols, & Brooks-Gunn, 2010) and carries “profound psychological effects” (Grumbach & Styne, 2003). Because adolescent depression creates susceptibility for future depressive episodes (e.g., Rutter, Kim-Cohen, & Maughan, 2006), it is perhaps not surprising that early pubertal timing continues to predict higher risk for depression during the course of adolescence and into early adulthood (Graber, Seeley, Brooks-Gunn, & Lewinsohn, 2004). 

  The most common explanation for the association between pubertal timing and depression hinges on the mismatch between physical, cognitive, and emotional maturation (also known as the maturation-disparity hypothesis; reviewed in Ge & Natsuaki, 2009). Puberty is characterized by a high degree of change, transformation, and challenge. Shifting friendships, new family roles and expectations, increases in parent-child conflict, novel romantic encounters, and either unwanted or unexpected sexual attention are all common during this time. Despite an outwardly mature appearance, girls who experience early puberty often maintain an age-appropriate level of cognitive and emotional development. This requires them to contend with the changes of puberty with fewer resources than peers who reach the same developmental milestones at a later chronological age—a predicament hypothesized to instill or to amplify feelings of isolation, loneliness, and helplessness.

 Socioeconomic Status, Puberty, and Depression 
  Early puberty is hardly random. Among industrialized nations, the United States is unique in its inequitable distribution of wealth across citizens (Davies, Sandström, Shorrocks, & Wolff, 2009). In general, girls from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds tend to reach menarche before girls from more affluent circumstances (James-Todd, Tehranifar, Rich-Edwards, Titievsky, & Terry, 2010). Earlier puberty is also related to factors often confounded with lower socioeconomic status (SES), such as family structure, race/ethnicity, or obesity (e.g., Bogaert, 2008; Freedman et  al., 2003; Obeidallah, Brennan, Brooks-Gunn, & Earls, 2004). These associations typically are considered sequelae of environmental stress: Early childhood adversities are believed to accelerate timing of reproductive maturation either through an evolved life-history strategy (Belsky, Steinberg, & Draper, 1991) or as part of “weathering,” the process of premature aging in individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds (Allsworth, Weitzen, & Boardman, 2005). Although most research on weathering considers health disparities later in life, timing of menarche may reflect one of the earliest signs that weathering begins in childhood. SES is relevant not just for pubertal timing but also for psychological well-being. 

  In general, there tends to be an inverse relation between SES and mental health; depression is disproportionately prevalent among both adults (e.g., Galea et al., 2007; Lorant et al., 2003) and adolescents from lower SES backgrounds (e.g., Dupéré, Leventhal, & Lacourse, 2009; Henderson et  al., 2005). Almost one half of women receiving public assistance report a clinically significant level of depressive symptoms and approximately 20% meet criteria for major depressive disorder (Lennon, Blome, & English, 2002). Consequently, low-SES teens come of age in families in which parents are often struggling and depressed themselves. They tend to live in neighborhoods with high degrees of violence, substance abuse, and social stigma. It has been suggested that these circumstances contribute to beliefs that negative experiences are far more common than are positive ones and that people have neither the ability nor the resources to change their own futures (Bolland, 2003; Bolland, Lian, & Formicella, 2005).（essay代写)

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