Uticopa Blog

We read a lot in the media about the rise in teenage pregnancies in the UK and the subsequent psychological distress - not just to the new mother but to the whole family. 

And the rest of the nation?

Everyone has an opinion.  You only have to read the hundreds of blogs on various sites to see that everyone, not just professionals, has a view on the problem.  Inevitably, the elderly - who have seen it all before in one form or another - place the problem fairly and squarely on society as a whole.  ‘Lack of respect for their elders' is a common refrain. ‘Young people have no respect for authority, don't understand or care about the consequences, no longer bother to get married first, so it's their own fault.....' or words to that effect.

But are they correct?  Certainly society as a whole has much to answer for.  Maybe youngsters are being taught about sex at too-young an age and so are encouraged to experiment in something that they would not have considered until much later. Maybe school sex-education is depicted as a purely physical act without the necessary attendant depth of feelings for their partner.  Maybe there should be less sex and violence portrayed on freely-available entertainment sources.

But when everything has failed and we have yet another teenage pregnancy, what about the psychological distress caused to the new mother?

Surprisingly, a new study shows that the distress actually comes before the pregnancy, not as a consequence of it.

The study, published in the September issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, used data from two large long-term surveys that followed thousands of teenage girls. Participants responded to items on symptoms associated with depression, such as how often they found things that did not usually bother them to be troublesome, how easily they could shake off feeling down or whether they had trouble concentrating. The researchers did not use the term "depression," which is a clinical diagnosis.

Certainly, as a preventative measure to teenage pregnancy, talking to young girls about their sexuality and responsible behaviour is always a good idea. Undoubtedly, responsible behaviour would include the use of birth control if the teenager were sexually active.

However, it has been found that only the combination of poverty and existing distress was a good predictor of teen pregnancy.

Many previous studies had shown high levels of depression among teenage mothers, but nationally-representative studies had not examined if distress was present before the pregnancy and stresses of young motherhood.

The conclusions were that psychologically-distressed girls are at risk for teen childbearing. This could help educators and clinicians identify at-risk adolescents.
It was felt that looking for symptoms of depression or distress should be part of normal health screening for all teenagers. High levels of depression have long-term negative consequences for both mothers and children. The higher levels of psychological distress in women who had teenage pregnancies continued well into adulthood.

So, depression in youngsters should always act as a warning sign.

One of the best ways to prevent teen pregnancy in teenage girls is not just education, but to have long-term goals and good self-esteem.

"Psychological distress does not appear to be caused by teen childbearing, nor does it cause teen childbearing, except apparently among girls from poor households," said Stefanie Mollborn, Ph.D., an assistant professor of sociology at the Institute of Behavioral Science of the University of Colorado at Boulder.