While teenagers who are at risk of depression with risky behaviors — drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes and cutting classes often alert parents and teachers that serious problems are brewing, a new study finds that there's another group of adolescents who are in nearly as much danger of experiencing the same mental symptoms.
These teens use tons of media, get insufficient sleep and have a sedentary (不爱活动的) lifestyle. Of course, that may sound like a description of every teenager on the planet. But the study wars that it is teenagers who engage in all three of these practices in the extreme that are truly in a dangerous position. Because their behaviors are not usually seen as a red flag, these young people have been called the "invisible risk" group by the study's authors.
The study's authors surveyed 15, 395 students and analyzed nine risk behaviors, including excessive alcohol use, illegal drug use, heavy smoking and high media use. Their aim was to determine the relationship between these risk behaviors and mental health issues in teenagers. The group that scored high on all nine of the risk behaviors was most likely to show symptoms of depression; in all, nearly 15% of this group reported being depressed, compared with just 4% of the low-risk group. But the invisible group wasn't far behind the high-risk set, with more than 13% of them exhibiting depression.
The findings caught Carli off guard. "We didn't expect that, " he says. "The high-risk group and low-risk group are obvious, but this third group was not only unexpected. It was so distinct and so larger — nearly one third of our sample — that it became a key finding of the study. "
Carli says that one of the most significant things about his study is that it provides new early warning signs for parents, teachers and mental health-care providers. And early identifications, support and treatment for mental health issues, he says, are the best ways to keep them from turning into full-blown disorders.
