Gender differences in depressive symptoms during adolescence: Role of gender-typed characteristics, self-esteem, body image, stressful life events, and pubertal status

Although boys present a similar or even higher rate of depressive symptoms than girls prior to adolescence, girls become more depressive than boys during their teenage years. Pubertal changes have been suggested to be more stressful for girls than for boys. In addition, they occur more often in synchronicity with the transition to high school, accounting for the emergence of a higher rate of depressive symptoms in girls than in boys during adolescence. Five hundred and forty-seven French-speaking adolescents between the ages of I I years and 18 years (M = 14.46 years; 279 girls and 268 boys) participated in the present cross-sectional study and completed the French versions of the Beck Depression Inventory, the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, the Life Event Questionnaire, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Questionnaire, the body image subscale of the Offer Self-image Questionnaire, and the Pubertal Development Scale. The results support the view that body image, self-esteem, and negative stressful life events mediate the relationship between gender and depressive symptoms during adolescence. Analyses of a subsample of adolescents who recently went through the transition to high school indicate that body image, self-esteem, and negative stressful life events mediate the relationship between pubertal status and depressive symptoms during the transition to high school.