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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據(jù)心理學(xué)網(wǎng)站psychcentral報(bào)道，一項(xiàng)新的研究震驚了研究者。研究發(fā)現(xiàn)對(duì)青春期的少女來說，感情問題對(duì)她們的精神健康會(huì)產(chǎn)生嚴(yán)重的負(fù)面影響。
“我發(fā)現(xiàn)，女孩有嚴(yán)重抑郁癥的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)，自殺的想法和企圖在增加，因?yàn)楦嗟年P(guān)系偏離她們的想象。”該研究的作者布瑞恩·索勒博士說。他是新墨西哥大學(xué)的社會(huì)學(xué)助理教授。
“相反，我發(fā)現(xiàn)沒有證據(jù)表明戀愛關(guān)系的真實(shí)性——抓住了何種程度的關(guān)系的展現(xiàn)方式是與青少年的想法或感覺不一致的——這有助于心理健康狀況不佳的男孩。”
索勒的研究資料來自國(guó)家青少年健康的縱向研究的5300多所高中的學(xué)生。從這個(gè)數(shù)據(jù)中，他檢查了青少年的理想和現(xiàn)實(shí)之間關(guān)系的不匹配的心理健康的影響。
這項(xiàng)研究發(fā)表在《健康與社會(huì)行為》雜志上。
索勒通過把青少年在最初的面試中怎樣描述他們的理想關(guān)系與面試結(jié)束后他們的第一次戀愛是怎樣作對(duì)比，來測(cè)量關(guān)系的不真實(shí)性。
“在最初的測(cè)試中，研究者們提供青少年許多帶有描述經(jīng)常會(huì)出現(xiàn)在戀愛中的事情的卡片，這是事情小到牽手大到接吻”，索勒說。
被研究者保留那些帶有他們理想戀愛關(guān)系中想要擁有事情的卡片，這會(huì)預(yù)示事件出現(xiàn)的順序。
在面試中，研究者詢問被研究者的精神健康問題。
對(duì)于為什么戀愛關(guān)系的不真實(shí)性增加了女孩產(chǎn)生精神問題的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)，而對(duì)男孩卻沒有影響。索勒說“戀愛關(guān)系是女孩特性的特別重要的組成，因此，與她們對(duì)自己感覺如何有很重要的關(guān)聯(lián)——好或者不好”。
“因此，那種偏離她們渴望的戀愛關(guān)系尤其損害她們的精神健康”。
另一方面，索勒說，戀愛對(duì)男孩來說沒有那么重要。
“男孩更加有可能發(fā)展他們?cè)谶\(yùn)動(dòng)或者其他業(yè)余活動(dòng)上的特性，所以這可能是為什么他們不被戀愛的不真實(shí)性影響的原因”他說。
按照研究策略表示，索勒說父母，教育工作者，政策制定者應(yīng)該考慮如何幫助女孩構(gòu)建與戀愛無關(guān)或與戀愛少有關(guān)聯(lián)的特性。
“幫助女孩發(fā)展她們?cè)谄渌虑樯系呐d趣而不是戀愛可以緩和戀愛的不真實(shí)性對(duì)她們精神健康的影響”，他說。
索勒建議創(chuàng)建程序和干預(yù)措施，旨在為青少年提供工具，幫助他們更好地控制她們關(guān)系的進(jìn)展可能會(huì)促進(jìn)青少年的心理健康和其他成長(zhǎng)成果。
