School failure harder on girls than boys: U.S. study

Academic failure appears to trouble teen-age girls more deeply than boys, US researchers said on Tuesday.

They said adolescent girls who are expelled, suspended or drop out of high school before they graduate are more likely to have a serious bout of depression by age 21 than boys with similar experiences.

"For girls there are broader implications of school failure," said Carolyn McCarty, a University of Washington researcher whose study appears in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

"We already know that it leads to more poverty, higher rates of being on public assistance and lower rates of job stability. And now this study shows it is having mental health implications for girls," McCarty said in a statement.

The study was drawn from data on more than 800 people in Seattle, Washington, and included people from 18 schools in high-crime neighborhoods.

The group was split evenly by gender and nearly half were white, 24 percent were black, 21 percent were Asian-American and the rest were from other groups.

Overall, 45 percent of the girls and 68 percent of the boys in the study experienced a major school failure, but 22 percent of the girls later became depressed compared with 17 percent for the boys.

"This gender paradox shows that while school failure is more atypical for girls, it appears to have more severe consequences when it does occur," McCarty said.

美国研究人员本周二称，学业失败对女生的影响大于男生。

研究人员称，中学还没毕业就被开除，或被要求休学或辍学的女生在21岁前患严重抑郁症的可能性比有相似经历的男生大。

华盛顿大学的研究人员凯罗琳•麦卡蒂说：“学业失败对女生的影响更大。”她负责的这项研究在《青少年健康期刊》上发表。

麦卡蒂在一份声明中称：“我们原来只知道学业失败会导致贫困加剧、依赖公共救助的人群比例升高以及工作稳定性下降等问题。而目前的这项研究表明，学业失败对女生的心理健康也会造成影响。”

研究数据来源于对西雅图和华盛顿的800多人和18个犯罪高发区的受访者调查。

研究人员按照性别将研究对象平均分为两组，其中近一半是白人，24%是黑人，21%是亚裔美国人，以及一些其它种族的人。

总的说来，分别有45%的女生和68%的男生经历过重大学业失败，但22%的女生后来因此患上了抑郁症，而这一比例在男生中仅为17%。

麦卡蒂说：“这一‘性别悖论’说明，虽然学业失败在女生中并不常见，但当它真的发生时，后果会更严重。”

Vocabulary:

atypical: not conforming to type; unusual or irregular（反常的，不正常的）