Girls who go through puberty earlier may be at greater risk of developing mental health conditions, with a new study from Orygen finding girls exposed to the hormone oestradiol (E2) earlier and more rapidly than their peers, experienced faster brain maturation and had greater risk of mental ill-health.
The study, published recently in Biological Psychiatry Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, tracked almost 3,000 girls across three years, measuring their hormones, mental health symptoms and brain development, and is the first to explore the impact of these hormone changes on girls’ brain development and risk of mental ill-health.
Lead author and PhD student at Orygen, Muskan Khetan, said the study offered important insights into E2’s effect on brain development and mental health, and had implications for early intervention.
“While we know that early puberty in girls, marked by physical changes, is a strong predictor of anxiety and depression, until now we hadn’t investigated the impact of invisible hormonal changes that can often happen before any physical signs of puberty,” Khetan said.
"Better understanding the impacts of hormone changes – particularly the effects of timing of E2 exposure and the pace at which E2 levels increase during early adolescence – may help identify risk of mental ill-health sooner, meaning we can intervene earlier and support girls before serious conditions develop.”
Khetan said that studying the effects of hormones such as E2 – which rises during puberty and helps the body grow – could provide further insights into the neurobiological mechanisms underlying adolescent mental health problems.
“While hormones don’t tell the whole story, they still have an incredibly important part to play in brain development, which in turn impacts our mental health and ability to regulate emotion,” Khetan said.
“Not all girls who experience early puberty will develop problems – environmental and social factors play an important role too – but this is the first study to highlight a possible biological factor impacting girls’ vulnerabilities to mental ill-health.
“Previous research has suggested the physical signs of early puberty are responsible for related symptoms of anxiety and depression (due to girls not yet having the coping skills for the biological and psychosocial demands of puberty), but this research suggests there may be earlier, less obvious changes playing an important role.”
The study notes that testing levels of E2 is easy and non-invasive – it can be measured through saliva and does not require a blood test – providing another way to screen for risk and support young people’s mental health.