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A new study surprised researchers, finding that for adolescent girls, romantic relationship problems can have serious, negative implications for their mental health. “I found that girls’ risk of severe depression, thoughts of suicide, and suicide attempt increase the more their relationships diverge from what they imagined,” said the study’s author Brian Soller, Ph.D., an assistant professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico. “Conversely, I found no evidence that romantic relationship inauthenticity —which captures the extent to which relationships unfold in ways that are inconsistent with how adolescents think or feel they should —contributes to poor mental health among boys.” Soller used data from more than 5,300 high school students from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. From this data set he examined the mental health consequences of mismatches between adolescents’ ideal and actual relationships. The study appears in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. Soller measured relationship inauthenticity by comparing how adolescents described their ideal relationship in an initial interview with how their first relationship after the interview actually played out. “In the initial interview, researchers provided adolescents with a number of cards describing events that often occur within relationships, including everything from hand-holding and kissing to sex,” Soller said. | 
