Adolescents today have a lot on their belt: academics, peer pressure, start of responsibility, and other variables in their young lives. To some adolescents, they naturally overcome challenges they face on the life of today’s world. However, there are some adolescents that emotional feeling that makes their mental health decline during their development of future orientation: hopelessness. In this paper, I will provide you the background of what hopelessness is, as well as a study that was conducted on hopelessness in adolescents.
We first need to know this: What is hopelessness? Hopelessness is a transdiagnostic psychological paradigm that arises in adolescence and is characterized by rough and obstinately negative expectations about the future and helplessness to alternate future outcomes (Abramson. 1989; Beck. 1974). Hopelessness is associated with several psychological symptoms, as well as high-risk symptoms. This would include; the thought of suicide, have major depression, engaging in sexual behavior, engaging in violence and use of drugs and alcohol. Assumed the strong relationship between hopelessness and negative consequences in adolescence, it is vital to better distinguish the developmental curve of hopelessness, as well as linked risk and protective elements.
This relates to Piaget’s Theory that we learned about in class. Hopelessness is associates with the Formal Operations stage in his theory. The “Formal Operations” Stage (between ages 11-15+ yrs.) is where adolescents have the capability of thinking logically and abstractly, where formulating hypotheses and testing those with more complex situations (Piaget, 1972). Piaget also states that this stage also approaches the adolescent’s thinking critically, or metacognition (Piaget, 1972). In addition, this is also the stage that involves the development of having the ability of thinking scientifically and apply such thinking to apply knowledge to construct the scientific method to cognitive tasks (Piaget, 1972).
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We know that hopelessness is an important build for understanding adolescent mental health. However, there is no data history that examines whether a developing cognitive function in adolescence, or future orientation, is associated with the projection of hopelessness across adolescence. Ironically, there are no data on how hopelessness alternates across adolescence in diverse and general experiments of adolescents (Abela, J. R., Parkinson, C., Stolow, D., & Starrs, C. 2009). According to the study, it tested whether the developmental trajectory of future orientation is associated with the trajectory of hopelessness in a racially and socioeconomically diverse sample of adolescents that were recruited at ages 12–13 and followed over 5 years (Abela, J. R., Parkinson, C., Stolow, D., & Starrs, C. 2009). The study states that, “It was predicted that aggregate levels of hopelessness would decline across adolescence and that greater future orientation would be associated with lower levels and faster decline of hopelessness” (Abela, J. R., Parkinson, C., Stolow, D., & Starrs, C. 2009).
The study was conducted from the Adolescent Cognition and Emotion (ACE) Project, an ongoing prospective, longitudinal, single cohort study examining risk factors for the emergence of depression from early to late adolescence (Abela, J. R., Parkinson, C., Stolow, D., & Starrs, C. 2009). Study says that, “male and female adolescents (12–13 years old) who identified as Caucasian or African American as well as their primary caretakers were recruited from Philadelphia area middle schools (public and private)” (Abela, J. R., Parkinson, C., Stolow, D., & Starrs, C. 2009).
Adolescents completed questionnaires at Time 1 (Mothers and adolescents who met all study inclusion and exclusion criteria completed written consent and assent) measuring future orientation and hopelessness (Abela, J. R., Parkinson, C., Stolow, D., & Starrs, C. 2009). Four follow-up assessments (Times 2–5) were carried out yearly with participants attending an in-person assessment at Temple University (Abela, J. R., Parkinson, C., Stolow, D., & Starrs, C. 2009). This study sampled 472 adolescents who had measures of hopelessness, future orientation, and key demographic information (52% female, mean age = 12.97, 47% Caucasian, 47% receiving free lunch) (Abela, J. R., Parkinson, C., Stolow, D., & Starrs, C. 2009).
Results of this study stated that, “A zero order correlation matrix examining the associations between demographic information, life stress and hopelessness at each time point and total future orientation at each time point (Abela, J. R., Parkinson, C., Stolow, D., & Starrs, C. 2009). They also stated, “Examination of growth factor sample means suggest that, on average, decreases in hopelessness and increases in future orientation across time are observed during adolescence (Abela, J. R., Parkinson, C., Stolow, D., & Starrs, C. 2009). This study indicates that as adolescents become more oriented towards their future, they are less likely to be hopeless, suggesting that the development of the cognitive capacity to orient towards the future may be a mechanism explaining the decline in hopelessness (Abela, J. R., Parkinson, C., Stolow, D., & Starrs, C. 2009).
My overall evaluation of this study was shocking. I found it surprising that this study is the first to demonstrate that hopelessness declines over adolescence over time, given the experimental importance of hopelessness in predicting these serious, hostile outcomes, such as suicide and violent behavior with an adolescent(s). I also found that these findings imitate those popular associations between stressful childhood life events and deprived cognitive functioning. I thought that providing original data suggesting a continuing effect of life stress on future orientation during a relatively less delicate developmental period was essential to the results of this study. My overall evaluation of this study was also interesting because more than half the sample was female, which makes mew think that the female body, through maturation, is the reasoning to female adolescents having that sense of hopelessness than male adolescents.
References
- Abela, J. R., Parkinson, C., Stolow, D., & Starrs, C. (2009). A test of the integration of the hopelessness and response styles theories of depression in middle adolescence. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 38(3), 354–364. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 15374410902851630
- Abramson, L. Y., Metalsky, G. I., & Alloy, L. B. (1989). Hopelessness depression: A theory-based subtype of depression. Psychological Review, 96, 358–372. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295x.96.2. 358
- Inhelder, B., & Piaget, J. (1958). The growth of logical thinking from childhood to adolescence. New York: Basic Books.
- Piaget, J. (1972). Intellectual evolution from adolescence to adulthood. Human Development, 15, 1-12.
