Originally published in Psychology Today
Source: Denny Luan on Unsplash
There is a gender gap in counseling referrals for children in elementary schools where boys are getting referred to therapy at a higher rate than girls (Green, Clopton, & Pope, 1996; Chamberlain, 2020).
Part of the reason this happens is because boys are more likely to act out, making their symptoms of trauma easy to see. Boys are more likely than girls to call attention to themselves when they need help.
Female children may tend to suppress their anger due to cultural disapproval of anger and aggression in women. According to feminist theory, boys and girls respond differently to similar adverse life experiences because of the ways they are socialized to be masculine or feminine. These differences may have less to do with a child’s biological sex than with how that child learns to be masculine or feminine in their culture.
Sadly, by conforming to what it means to be feminine, girls can end up hiding their symptoms of trauma from the adults who would be able to help them. This is detrimental to the health of these children in the following ways:
It results in the lack of therapeutic services for these children, leaving the root cause of their symptoms untreated. This is worrisome because boys and girls experience adverse life experiences at the same rate (Tolin & Foa, 2008).
The lack of mental health services provided to girls at a young age may be a factor in why more women than men are diagnosed with depression in adulthood (Silver, Kumari, Conklin, & Karakurt, 2018).
Untreated trauma in children affects healthy bodily functioning by causing difficulties with sleep, headaches, poor fine motor functioning, and problems with language functioning (van der Kolk, 2014).
It impedes these children from developing healthy peer relationships and building a positive self-image and self-esteem. (van der Kolk, 2014).
Unless there is an effort made to learn and detect internalized symptoms of trauma, this gender gap in counseling referrals will persist and these children in need of therapy will continue to go untreated. To learn how to recognize internalized symptoms of trauma, please see my blog post “14 Signs of Trauma You May Not Recognize.” With education and a willingness to act, this gender gap can begin to close, and these girls can begin to receive the help they deserve.
References
Chamberlain, E. S. (2020). Girls’ invisible responses to trauma: The gender gap in counseling referrals for schoolchildren. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, 53. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/openview/2eba3612cb6f46e1fd118a67df916f88/1
Green, M. T., Clopton, J. R., & Pope, A. W. (1996). Understanding gender differences in referral of children to mental health services. Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, 4(3), 182–190. https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/106342669600400305
Silver, K. E., Kumari, M., Conklin, D., & Karakurt, G. (2018). Trauma and health symptoms in a community sample: Examining the influences of gender and daily stress. American Journal of Family Therapy, 46(2), 153–167. https://doi.org/10.1080/01926187.2018.1461031
Tolin, D. F., & Foa, E. B. (2008). Sex differences in trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder: A quantitative review of 25 years of research. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, S(1), 37–85. https://doi.org/10.1037/1942-9681.S.1.37
van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. New York, NY: Penguin Books.