Nevertheless, words can hurt. A young person who is verbally attacked regularly also risks becoming the black sheep, the one who is excluded. ‘One of the tasks of adolescence consists of learning to live in a group: if a young person likes school, it is for the friends she or he makes there. It is vital for them to belong to a group. When they are excluded from it, they are also deprived of the skills to be acquired through this group and the questions, the self questioning and the feelings of doubt the others are confronted with,’ explains the psychologist.

She also notes that, besides the victims of harassment, the ‘persecutors’ can also be going through a bad time. Thus certain of them have themselves been harassed (or have experienced aggressiveness within the family), which has led them to develop behaviour based on aggressive functioning. ‘Without a doubt neither the parents nor the teachers would associate aggressiveness with depression, particularly as far as girls are concerned,’ points out the clinician, here signalling one of the signs about which it would be possible to be more vigilant.

Irritability, a red light

In 2011-2012 the psychologist’s second research study was devoted to ‘Links between depressive moods and close relationships with parents and friends.’ The study involved 1,496 teenagers, brought together according to their age (12, 14 and 16), from eleven teaching institutions. The study allowed her to, amongst other things, confirm that teenagers express their depressive feelings through somatic aspects (such as headaches or stomach pains). Irritability also occupies a striking place on the ‘hit-parade’ of indicative signs. ‘Whilst in the mind of the general public this sign is rarely connoted with depression it is one of the most striking precursor criteria or symptoms to be found amongst girls,’ observes Aurore Boulard.

Girls nevertheless are sadder, more depressed (above all for the eldest amongst them) and more subject to crying fits than boys. Amongst them depressive problems often go hand in hand with eating disorders, around the age of fifteen in particular.

‘In the final analysis four items are more marked amongst girls than amongst boys: a feeling of having no energy, being irritable, doubting your worth and feeling bad about themselves. For girls we could add the fact of crying easily, and having concentration problems for boys,’ notes the psychologist.

This second study also stresses that parental attachment certainly has an influence on depressive moods, but does not intervene first and foremost. ‘In fact this influence is manifested jointly with life events, which occupy just as important a place,’ points out the psychologist. ‘This insight concerning parental attachment could enable certain parents who feel guilty to be reassured.’

Parents in effect often feel they are more to blame for what they see as an educational ‘failure’ which has led their child into depression. The subjective scale the teenagers were presented with showed that those with high depression scores felt that they had received few marks of care, affection, listening and empathy from their parents, whom they moreover judged ‘controlling’ because they imposed very strict rules, prevented them from going out, read their mail, etc. Nonetheless it would be a mistake to imagine that all the difficulties arise due to family attachment, even if it figures amongst the risk factors. Finally, an important observation rounds off this assessment of the link between depression and the family situation: this link is strongest not when the teenager lives with just one of his or her parents but when he or she lives with a person other than his or her father or mother.