Teens involved in arts activities report more depressive symptoms than teens not involved in the arts

 Teens who participate in after-school arts activities such as music, drama and painting are more likely to report feeling depressed or sad than students who are not involved in these programs, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

This is the first study to find that young people's casual involvement in the arts could be linked to depressive symptoms, according to the researchers. The article was published online in APA's journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.

"This is not to say that depression is a necessary condition for either a teen or an adult to become an artist, nor are we showing that participating in the arts leads to mental illness," said lead author Laura N. Young, MA, of Boston College. "However, previous research has revealed higher rates of mental illness symptoms in adult artists. We were interested in whether this association is present earlier in development."

While girls were more likely to take part in the arts after school and reported somewhat higher rates of depression than boys, the study found that both boys and girls involved in arts reported more depressive symptoms than those who were not involved in extracurricular arts activities.

Teens involved exclusively in sports were the least likely to report depressive symptoms. However, there was no difference in depressive symptoms between teens involved in the arts who also did sports and teens involved in the arts who did not also participate in sports. This suggests that arts participation rather than a lack of sports participation was associated with depression, the authors said.

The researchers looked at American teenagers' involvement in extracurricular activities in 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010 using data from the U.S. Longitudinal Survey of Youth collected from 2,482 students 15 to 16 years old. Of the sample, 1,238 were female, 27 percent were black, 19 percent were Hispanic and 54 percent were non-Hispanic whites.

The students responded to survey questions asking how often they participated in "lessons in music, art or drama, or practice of music, singing, drama, drawing/painting" and "going to sports lessons, playing sports or practicing any physical activity" after school. Answers could range from "often" to "almost never," the study said.

source-science daily