New research suggests that teens who feel better-prepared to take on the challenges of puberty are more resilient and have a stronger sense of mental well-being.
While puberty is often defined by physical changes, teens also navigate emotional and social shifts – managing conflicts with parents or friends, adapting to new personal care routines and finding their place in evolving peer groups.
A recent study published in the Journal of Adolescence suggests that teens who understand the changes caused by puberty will be more confident in handling those changes, a concept called pubertal self-efficacy.
“When you’re going through puberty, you’re going through all of these changes, and it can feel like everything is happening at once,” said Christopher Davis, a doctoral student in the field of psychology and the study’s first author.
The research was conducted in the Adolescent Transitions Lab, led by Jane Mendle, associate professor of psychology and senior author of the study, which included 124 middle school students, aged 12 to15 years old. The distribution of the students’ sex at birth was nearly even: 65 male, 59 female. The students completed assessments measuring symptoms of depression and anxiety, pubertal development, and stress.
“There is a clear consensus that you start to see upticks in psychopathology in early adolescence because of puberty and the stress associated with it,” Davis said. “I wanted to see if pubertal self-efficacy could disrupt that and possibly be a mechanism to decrease someone’s odds for those symptoms.”
The assessments on stress focused on two types: general stress and puberty-specific stress, both of which are linked to anxiety and depressive symptoms. Davis’ research found that adolescents with higher levels of confidence in managing puberty experience fewer symptoms like sadness, guilt, fatigue, and, for some, thoughts of death or suicide.
“The fact that pubertal self-efficacy had an effect in the presence of not just one, but two forms of stress, is pretty significant,” Davis said. “We know stress should predict more depressive and anxiety symptoms for this group, but for those with high pubertal self-efficacy, it didn’t.”
One significant discovery, according to Davis, is that the findings were consistent, regardless of age, pubertal timing and gender.
“Women and girls tend to have higher levels of depression and anxiety across the board,” Davis said. “What this suggests is that if a girl had the same level of pubertal self-efficacy as a boy, then they reported the same number of depressive and anxiety symptoms, on average. That’s really encouraging.”
While self-efficacy has been widely studied, Davis said this is the first study focused on puberty. The preliminary data is promising, but he says more research is needed, including a longitudinal study that follows youth over time. But these results, combined with current self-efficacy literature, provide guidelines for parents and caregivers looking to help build teens’ confidence as they enter puberty. He says many behaviors teens adopt are modeled after adults, meaning parents can play an influential role.
“Talk with your kids about the changes that might happen, or that may make them uncomfortable. Parents can even talk about their own experience and how they dealt with puberty,” Davis said. “We’re preparing them for the unknown, and we’re allowing them to be a bit more confident going through that.”
Davis also noted that because puberty often arrives earlier than many families expect, conversations about the changes ahead may need to start sooner. Preparing adolescents before the transition begins, he said, may help build the foundation for the confidence that will help them navigate puberty when the time comes.
Other co-authors of the study are Kathleen McCormick ’16 and Sophie Belfield, doctoral students in psychology; and Adelaide Graham ’24.
Juan Vazquez-Leddon is the communications director for the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research.