Abstract:
Past empirical literature has provided conflicted results regarding the association between
adolescent coitus and depression. While some studies conclude that those youth who are
sexually active may be at risk for depression, others provide contrary results, or findings
that are only representative of high-risk sexual behaviors such as intercourse without a
condom. Thus, the results are unclear as to whether depression results directly from
coitus, or if this relationship is spurious; that is, there may be biological, psychological,
or sociological variables that may predict both depression and early sexual intercourse.
Using the Add Health restricted dataset, I analyzed the depressive symptomatology of
adolescents over a seven-year time period. The final sample (n=6,51O) was comprised of
49.35% male (n=3,213) and 50.65% female (n=3,297) participants. Results indicated
that the relationship between earlier adolescent sexual intercourse and later depressive
symptomatology is spurious. Although an earlier age of first coitus is predictive of later
depressive symptomatology, both variables appear to be concomitant outcomes of the
biopsychosocial process. Thus, while one may be able to use early coitus as a marker for
subsequent depressive symptomatology, it does not occur because of early coitus.
Furthermore, the reverse relationship was not found to be significant in this study. That
is, higher levels of depressive symptomatology do not predict an earlier age of first
sexual intercourse in adolescents.
