Daily life with depressive symptoms: Gender differences in adolescents' everyday emotional experiences

Depression is a prevalent and debilitating illness facing many adolescents, especially adolescent girls, whose risk for this disorder is approximately twice that of boys. Many studies have identified mechanisms that place girls at higher risk for depression during adolescence. Few, however, have examined differences in the everyday emotional experiences of boys and girls with varying levels of depressive symptoms. Using the Experience Sampling Method, this study investigated the roles of gender and depressive symptomatology in the emotional experiences of a community sample of youth (11-18 year-olds) from the Sloan 500 Family Study. Females with higher levels of depressive symptoms were more likely than females with fewer depressive symptoms and all males to experience strong negative emotions and to attribute the cause of these emotions to other people. These results suggest that emotional reactivity in interpersonal contexts is especially important to understand gender differences in the daily experience of depressive symptoms.