For parents, the message is not to be alarmed at the slightest advance in puberty, but to remain attentive to the psychological experience of young girls whose bodies are changing more quickly than those of their peers.
When the body changes faster, anxiety also seems to gain ground
Using data from the Danish National Birth Cohort, researchers followed 13,208 adolescents for several years to study precisely when their puberty begins and how quickly it progresses.
Among girls, each year of earlier breast development was associated with approximately 26% greater odds of being diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Earlier onset of pubic hair was also associated with approximately 1.5 times higher risk of social anxiety symptoms reported by adolescent girls.
It’s not just age that matters: so does the speed of transformation
A teenager can enter puberty in a period considered normal while progressing much more quickly than her peers. The researchers thus distinguish the
timingthat is to say the age at which puberty occurs, from tempowhich corresponds to its speed of progression.
This acceleration could be important on a psychological level. The body sometimes transforms in a few months while the young girl must still come to terms with a new image of herself and the way others see her. The authors speak of a form of “maturational compression,” with less time to adapt to these changes.
The authors point out that thesocial anxiety
often appears precisely at this period, when the gaze of others becomes central and social networks amplify every detail of the body. In another work on the same cohort, Anne Gaml-Sørensen reports that girls in early puberty are approximately twice as likely to receive psychiatric medications as those whose puberty begins at the same time as their peers.
Faced with early puberty, should you be worried about your daughter?
The study does not confirm that early puberty directly causes anxiety. This is an observational study and other factors may be involved.
But the signal is worth taking into account. In this cohort, approximately 4% of adolescents had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder; among girls, 8.2% had consulted a psychologist or psychiatrist in private and 4.1% had received psychotropic treatment before the age of 19.
The results observed in boys were less consistent and did not establish a solid association between the timing of puberty and anxiety disorders.
For researchers, these data could especially encourage increased vigilance towards young girls whose puberty is particularly early or rapid, particularly when signs of anxiety appear. It is therefore not a matter of inevitability, but of a possible moment of psychological fragility that should not be neglected.