When the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020, it brought many aspects of life to a standstill. For adolescents, this included attending school and the social interactions that happen there. But the process of growing up continued - including puberty.
This had Kathleen McCormick '16, a doctoral candidate in psychology studying reproductive transitions, wondering about how adolescents were handling this coming-of-age process during the pandemic, specifically the link between puberty and depression for girls.
"The question of how people are experiencing puberty during that time became very front of mind because much of the experience, and the changes that happen, do not happen in private," said McCormick, who studies in the Adolescent Transitions Lab led by Jane Mendle, associate professor of psychology. "Puberty is not purely a biological experience. It is fundamentally a social experience too."
Decades of research have linked higher pubertal status (the measure of how far someone has progressed through the physical changes of puberty) and earlier pubertal timing (how pubertally developed someone is compared to others their age and sex) with increased depressive symptoms. But McCormick's research, published in the journal Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, showed that link didn't hold during the pandemic as schools were shut down and turned to virtual learning.
