Neither too early nor too late
This second study has also brought to light the importance of perceived pubertal timing, a phenomenon which remains little studied by psychologists. ‘We sensed that the problem was likely to be situated around the difficulty of people accepting their differences in comparison with others,’ explains the psychologist. The question asked of young people thus concerned their feelings and the way they situated themselves in comparison with others in terms of puberty.
Two categories of young people obtained high depression scores: those who feel very far in advance and those who feel very far behind. ‘Whatever the case a deviation in comparison with the group one belongs to is very stressful,’ observes Aurore Boulard in her thesis. Thus late puberty brings about exclusion from the peer group of the same sex. It isolates whilst leaving the young person insecure about his or her physique. It also gives the young people involved the feeling of being judged, a determining point in the face of depression. The girls who declared that they were behind were also those with the highest depression scores. As for early puberty, it can prove just as unsettling for them.
Once again the first two research studies have completed each other: they have shown that for severe depression, verbal attacks, perceived pubertal timing and the judgement of others which arises from it, bring about the same reasons, for both boys and girls, to feel bad about themselves.
The words of sorrows
In choosing to look into life narratives the third study presented in this thesis has really gone off the beaten path. It was carried out on the basis of the accounts of 60 young people, distributed into statistically representative groups of 20, each containing 13 girls and 7 boys. They were met face to face with for 50 minutes. Next to the group with those who have a low score on depression scales another was composed of depressive teenagers who remain in school, whilst the last one was made up of depressive teenagers hospitalised in child psychiatry units for a major depressive episode.
The psychologist’s objective was to study and compare, depending on the groups, the content and form of these different stories, and to see if they differed according to the depression score. In order to do so in the most scientific possible, a software application allowed the syntax as well as the use and repetition of words to be classified. ‘Beyond any currents in philosophy and any interpretation which could be linked to words, the software thus provided raw and refined material which objectified the statements made by the teenagers,’ notes Aurore Boulard.
Narration allows a meaning to be given to the experience of identity development, one of the most important psychosocial tasks of adolescence. It goes beyond simply reporting events, because it also carries emotions with it and it contributes to providing meaning, for others and the self. Through their life narratives teenagers begin to reconstruct their past, their present such as they perceive it and (normally) they anticipate their future. They thus deliver a history which has meaning for them or for the people they are addressed to. In providing these life stories teenagers are also saying: ‘this is the way I want you to understand me today.’
The only question asked of all the young people was: ‘What has made you become who you are today?’ When this question did not seem clear enough to the teenager it was completed in this form: ‘Are there positive or negative events which have made you become who you are today?’
The analysis of the stories shows that young depressives use fewer words than the others. Between depressive teenagers in school and those who had been hospitalised there was also a large difference between the words used and the redundancies within the stories (more frequent in the case of hospitalisation). The hospitalised people took longer to start their stories, had longer pauses, spoke in a lower and less strong voice, and displayed more emotions.
