Adolescent's Perceptions Of The Gendered Context Of Teenage Depression

Our modern society is basked in innovative benefits where its quick development has given birth to new technology and medical advances. However, at the same time our quickly changing society has left side-effects, where many individuals have suffered from the rapid change and stresses that come along with developing products and services at high speed. These societal stresses have passed onto the generation of our future, which is crippling their abilities to achieve at high rates. The pressure to succeed and match up to society’s new and constantly changing standards have left adolescents greatly at risk for anxiety and depression. Many people worldwide are affected by depression causing the teenagers of today’s society to be at risk as

Wisdom, Professor of Health Policy and Management at George Washington University, and her research team have investigated society’s proclaimed gender roles and its effects on teenager depression. According to Wisdom, “gender role specification” are the socially constructed expectations based on sex, in other words, they are expectations a certain gender is typically supposed to perform. Wisdom establishes reasons explaining why adolescent girls and boys, aged twelve through eighteen, are plagued with depression during an interview conducted by Kaiser Permanente Northwest (KPNW). The results reveal that teenagers were greatly influenced by “gender role specification” where maturing teenagers were expected to act a certain way because of their gender (Wisdom, et al). For example, teenage girls were expected to conform to the society’s perceived view of beauty, such that they should be thin and compassionate (Wisdom, et al). These ideals have often been impossible to achieve because of the media’s false advertisement and the physical harm it would have on the body. On the other hand, teenage boys were expected to conform to society’s perceived view of masculinity, where they were expected to be successful and restricted from portraying emotions or affection (Wisdom, et al). The act of restricting emotions only promotes teenagers to be unable to voice out their struggles and cope with failures which could lead to depression. For teenage boys and girls alike, failure of achieving these social expectations would often lead to disappointment (Wisdom, et al). Jennifer P. Wisdom concludes that gender expectations play a role in teenage depression which leads into the possible sources of depression in