Exploring mechanisms underlying high anxiety and depression rates among girls and young women

From around early adolescence, women and girls are around two-to-three times more likely to experience anxiety and depression than men and boys. Dr Gemma Knowles, Lecturer in Epidemiology and Youth Mental Health at the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health at King’s, has been awarded £4 million Wellcome funding to better understand the mechanisms through which biological sex and sexism causes anxiety and depression to develop and persist in teenage girls and young women aged 10 – 24 years.

Working with an interdisciplinary team of social scientists, neurobiologists, and young people, Dr Knowles and her team will examine the biological (e.g., brain, hormones) and psychosocial (e.g., sports, self-esteem) mechanisms through which sexism shapes mental health. They will also use innovative approaches (such as wearables, hormone-profiling and period-tracking) to understand how mechanisms work in real-time.

The research programme, titled “Working with young people to transform understanding of how sex and sexism cause anxiety in teenage girls and young women: international, interdisciplinary & intersectional approaches” will take place in the UK and Japan in a collaboration with co-lead Dr Atsushi Nishida, Director for the Center of Social Science and Medicine at the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science (TMIMS), and his team.

Dr Rachael Yielder

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