A report shows that sexually active teens are far more likely to be depressed and to attempt suicide than those who hold off until marriage.
More than a quarter (25%) of teen girls who said they were sexually active also said they had been depressed "a lot of the time" or "most or all of the time" in the previous week, compared to 7.7% of girls who said they weren't sexually active.
And, 60.2% of girls who refrained from sex said they were "never or rarely" depressed, compared to just 36.8 percent of sexually active girls who were never or rarely depressed.
For boys, 8.3% of those who were sexually active reported problems with depression, compared to just 3.4% for those who weren't.
Girls who were sexually active were 3 times more likely to say they had attempted suicide than those who weren't. Sexually active boys were nearly 9 times more likely to have attempted suicide.
The majority of teens who had become sexually active admitted they'd started too soon and expressed regret.
[Sex, sadness and suicide, Heritage Fdn., 3Jun03; data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, 1996, for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and 17 other federal agencies. The in-home survey (given with parental permission) interviewed 6,500 people 14-17 years old]