“She’s so pretty but she doesn’t always act that way. Her mood’s out swinging on the swing set almost every day. She said to me that she’s so happy it’s depressing, and all I said is, ‘Someone get that girl a mood ring.”
While the lyrics above from the song “Mood Rings” by Relient K are catchy, they also shed light on an ever-relevant teen issue: mood swings. And no, they don’t only happen to girls. If you ever thought about why “moody teenager” is such a stereotype, or why “emo” is so popular among the high school crowd, it is because all teens are prone to moodiness.
Mood swings are, by definition, “Alternation of a person’s emotional state between periods of euphoria and depression.” This definition does not cover the variety of other moods involved in the ups and downs experienced by teenagers. Excitement to anxiety, happiness to depression, sadness to anger at the drop of a hat – teenage moods are as unpredictable as New England weather. Now researchers have discovered a biological link to this phenomenon, proving to teenagers everywhere what they already knew and have been asserting since forever: it’s not your fault.
Research has been conducted on this aspect of the teenage brain for some time now, and the research study at the Child Psychiatry Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md., is just one example. There, hundreds of teenage volunteers allow government researchers to look into their brains using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). What scientists have found is that as the brain matures during the teen years, the brain’s individual components mature separately. One of the last parts in the brain to mature is the prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for planning, judgment and self-control. Adolescents are capable of very strong emotions and very strong passions, but their prefrontal cortex hasn’t caught up with them yet. It’s as though they don’t have the brakes that allow them to slow those emotions down.
SMART MOVES
The brain reaches 90 percent of its full size by age six.
A study from the State University of New York provides another biological reason for teenage mood fluctuations: hormones. It seems that hormones are to blame for everything that happens during the teenage years: acne, awkwardness, awakening sex drive – well, now we can add mood swings to the list. Researchers experimented on mice and found that the hormone THP, a steroid usually released in response to stress, has the opposite effect in adolescent mice than the pre-adolescent and adult ones. In teen brains, the number of THP receptors located in the hippocampus, the part of the brain that regulates emotions, is far higher than non-adolescents. Therefore in teens, THP raises anxiety rather than calms. This results in what adults see as mood swings: overreactions to stress which a teen really cannot control.
Biology aside, however, there are plenty of other reasons for moodiness, and just plain being a teenager is one of them. Being a teenager means existing in that almost-always awkward phase between being a child and being an adult – and how many people do you know who went through that phase smoothly? Not many, that’s for sure. All the physical and social changes going on (“Where is this crazy acne coming from? Am I popular? Or just a loser?”) are more than enough reason for unstable moods. Add the perpetually angst-filled biologically-influenced mental state to this mix, and it’s no wonder many teens always seem to be having a rough time.
If all that wasn’t enough, a Swiss study done at the Psychiatric University Clinics in Basel asserts that teenagers tend to feel love very strongly because of their brains' tendency to cause extreme reactions. They found that teens in love got “sweaty palms, pounding hearts and increased and excessive energy when they were around their beloved,” and that they “showed extreme empathy…and were willing to die for their beloved.” Other than explaining why “Twilight," with its themes of unrequited teenage love for a hot vampire, is such a phenomenon, these findings also give another take on the issue of mood swings.
It is important to note that extreme mood swings can be symptoms of diseases such as bipolar disorder (experiencing extreme highs and lows in mood) and clinical depression. If you're really concerned about your mood swings, have a mental health provider check your symptoms. But don’t instantly self-diagnose yourself with depression just because you’ve had a few periods of feeling irritable, sad, angry or giddy. It’s safe to say that more often than not, mood swings in teenagers are caused by just that: the fact that you’re a teen.
In other words, don't get too wigged out by your moods – they're normal!
This article has been reviewed by BodiMojo expert Tara Cousineau, Ph.D.
