Last week the Huffington Post reported on new data released from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which found that "adolescent girls suffer from depression at a rate nearly three times that of boys their age." As it was stated:
A depressive episode was defined as a period of two weeks or longer during which teens experienced a depressed mood or a loss of interest or pleasure, along with other changes in day-to-day functioning, like a loss of sleep or appetite or changes in concentration.The figures also suggest that an average of 1.4 million girls between ages 12 and 17 experienced one of those episodes within the last year -- a rate that is nearly three times that of their male peers.
I don't know about you, but I do not find this information all that shocking. First, the data came from one-on-one interviews with teens of this age group as well as personal questionnaires. Girls, by nature, are much more inclined to talk about their mental state as opposed to their male counterparts. How many pubescent boys do you know that will openly admit to having "feelings?" I don't even know many grown men who are willing to cop to their emo side.
Secondly, and not to in any way belittle teenage depression, but girls of that age are so dramatic. Ladies, do you remember being 14? Life was the worst! The littlest thing could set you off into an all-out fit of hysteria. Every middle school dance I can remember consisted of nothing but girls crying in bathrooms over boys who were more interested in drinking soda and burping than dancing. I spent the majority of junior high school holed up in the bathroom either comforting a crying friend or crying myself.
And of course we were always crying; at any given moment your pants could be covered in blood and you wouldn't even know until some football-playing dillweed pointed it out to the entire school. I knew girls who used to walk around with their backpacks slung lower than their rears in the unforeseen event that their period just decided "today was the day."
I cannot even imagine being a teenage girl now and all the horrors you have to contend with. Now, when you are not invited to the older kids' keg party and you spend the night watching PBS with your family, you have to see the entire affair documented pictorially on Facebook. Your diary is your Twitter feed and your mom and kid brother can totally read it at will. Your dad knows that you are buying maxipads because Foursquare tagged you at Walgreens. OMG, who wouldn't be completely depressed?
Ignoring the violations of privacy that young girls have today, I think it is pretty safe to say that teenage girls have always been a depressed bunch and will forever be. They can't help it.
And luckily they are because we grownups love to vicariously relive our teenage maladies so that we can feel better about "getting older." Ogling the pathetic plights of teenage girls in movies is practically a national past time. Here are our top ten favorite depressed movie teens.
10. Pump Up the VolumeGranted, Pump Up the Volume is all about Christian Slater's angsty pirate radio DJ, Mark Hunter. However, his devoted listener, the overachieving daddy's girl Paige Woodward, shocks the entire school when they find out that despite her outward appearance, she is a miserable mess. Just like any normal depressed teenage girl, she microwaves her pearls.
9. Sixteen CandlesThere is absolutely nothing that happens to Molly Ringwald's Samantha that isn't the most embarrassing moment in her life. Her parents forget her birthday, her underwear goes on nerd display, her grandparents snore, her sister's a bitch; her life is a series of horrors. I am surprised she even lived to be 16.
8. BeetlejuiceWinona Ryder plays the depressed goth teen to perfection in this Tim Burton classic. There is nothing as disheartening as the scene in which she can't even write a good suicide note without dramatic self-deprecation. "I am alone. I am utterly alone."
