Embedded Distress: Social Integration, Gender, and Adolescent Depression

Abstract

In adolescence, teens manage close friendships while simultaneously evaluating their social position in the larger peer context. Conceptualizing distinct local and global network structures clarifies how social integration relates to mental wellbeing. Examining local cohesion and global embeddedness in the context of key factors related to mental health, such as gender and friends’ depression, can further distinguish when the structure and content of social integration relate to higher and lower depressive levels. Analyses using survey data from PROSPER (n = 27,091, grades 9–12) indicate global embeddedness is generally protective, but for girls, greater global embeddedness when friends are more depressive is associated with increased depressive symptoms. For girls, greater local cohesion reduces associations between more depressive friends and increased depressive levels, while for boys, both local cohesion and friends’ depression are largely irrelevant. Results indicate the importance of considering both local and global network integration in tandem with gender and friends’ depression to understand how social integration relates to mental health.

The Use of Qualitative Case Studies of Graduate School Students: A Quantitative Analysis of their Depression Scale

“…The findings also suggested that women were more likely than men to have experienced normalscale depression. Although depression can afflict people of any gender, there are significant patterns and distinctions in the occurrence, manifestation, and management of depression that are specific to gender (Copeland, 2023). Table 3 presented that for those respondents who were single, the results showed a high leaning toward depression.…”