Gender Differences in Psychological Well-Being and Distress During Adolescence

Abstract

Several investigations report a greater prevalence of depressive symptoms in girls compared to boys during adolescence. Moreover, females show higher anxiety levels compared to males both in clinical sample and general population. A complete model of psychological well-being in an eudemonic perspective has been proposed by Carol Ryff, encompassing six key dimensions: autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life, and self-acceptance. Once defining these dimensions, Ryff created a self-rating questionnaire (PWB scales) for measuring these constructs. Research, using this instrument on adult and aging individuals, have been already published and have pointed out that females show lower psychological well-being levels compared to males. In two studies on an Italian population, females reported significant lower levels in all PWB scales compared to males except in positive relations. Women showed higher scores in this scale also in US investigation, but no other significant differences were found for any other dimensions of well-being. Since, in above-mentioned studies, participants were already out of adolescence, the aim of this investigation is to explore gender differences in the levels of psychological well-being and distress during one of the most controversial period of human life: adolescence. As adolescence is a period of life during which a lot of changes follow quickly one after another, we conducted a follow-up study in order to explore if results would be stable over time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)