The psychological underpinnings of gender disparities in adolescent mental health - Project Summary This project will elucidate the psychological processes that give rise to gender disparities in mental health across development. Despite efforts toward mitigating such disparities, gender-linked outcomes remain stark: relative to men, women consistently report higher rates of internalizing problems and lower levels of self- esteem. The relation between gender and mental health is evident by adolescence: thus, efforts to identify how such disparities emerge—and, critically, how they may be mitigated—require a broad-based investigation into the psychological processes that create and sustain them across development. To date, research into the emergence and manifestation of gender differences in mental health has focused largely on the role of biological factors linked to sex (e.g., differences in genetics, brain circuitry, or hormones). However, gender identity—the extent to which one identifies as a boy/man, a girl/woman, nonbinary, or another gender—is complex and multi-faceted. Not only is its relation to biology inconsistent, as in the case of gender-diverse populations, but it is linked to a host of psychological variables (e.g., attributes, behaviors, and experiences) that may themselves contribute to psychological distress. The proposed research will seek to achieve a more holistic understanding of how gender disparities in mental health emerge by involving a diverse sample of adolescents, including cisgender girls (gender identity: girl, assigned sex: female), transgender girls (gender identity: girl, assigned sex: male), cisgender boys (gender identity: boy, assigned sex: male), and transgender boys (gender identity: boy, assigned sex: female). This sample will be drawn from a large-scale longitudinal study of socially-transitioned transgender and gender-diverse youth in North America (including 40+ U.S. states), of which the project Sponsor is the Principal Investigator. Our research will seek to address several important objectives across two waves of online data collection, spaced one year apart. In Aim 1, we will distill the unique role of gender identity, relative to assigned sex, in predicting gender disparities in mental health across adolescence. In Aim 2, we will elucidate the influence of relevant psychological variables linked to gender (i.e., possession of feminine vs. masculine characteristics, reports of self-objectification, and experiences of sexism) in accounting for gender disparities in mental health across adolescence. By investigating gender disparities in mental health in a sample comprised of both cisgender and gender-diverse adolescents, this research is well-positioned to clarify the role of gender-linked psychological variables—relative to biological ones—in predicting gender disparities in mental health, thus opening up novel pathways for achieving gender equity in this domain. Additionally, the proposed project enables us to expand the inclusivity of research on mental health by affording us the opportunity to examine gender-based disparities in mental health in the context of existing disparities between cisgender and gender-diverse adolescents.
