Objective: The purpose of the study was to investigate the prevalence of the use of a transitional object (TO) in adolescence and its connection with depressive symptoms and mental distress in youth by gender.
Method: The study group consisted of 1,054 adolescents (465 boys, 589 girls) from normal comprehensive schools in Turku, a Finnish town with approximately 175,000 inhabitants. The mean age of both gender groups was 14.5 years (SD 0.5); respondents came from all social classes. Background and TO information was collected with questionnaires. Depressive symptoms and mental distress were explored by the children's depression inventory (CDI) and its subscales: low self-confidence, anhedonia and sadness.
Results: Of all respondents, 29% (n = 285) had a TO: 37% of girls and 18% of boys. The difference between genders was statistically significant. There was also a statistically significant gender difference in the character of the TO reported: 72 % of girls with a TO had a soft toy, whereas 49% of boys with a TO used hard objects, such as pens, hard toys or books. TO-users showed more depressive symptoms than non-users, but the difference was not statistically significant (P = 0.053). Significant differences were found in the CDI subscales: TO-users had more sadness than non-users and girls using a TO showed more sadness than non-using girls. TO-using boys did not differ from non-using boys with regard to sadness or the other CDI-subscales.
Conclusions: The use of a TO seems to be common in adolescence. Adolescents with more depressive symptoms more often used a TO. The sadness of girls using TOs requires attention.