Academic failure appears to trouble teen-age girls more deeply than boys, US researchers said on Tuesday.

    They said adolescent girls who are expelled, suspended or drop out of high school before they graduate are more likely to have a serious bout of depression by age 21 than boys with similar experiences.

    "For girls there are broader implications of school failure," said Carolyn McCarty, a University of Washington researcher whose study appears in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

    "We already know that it leads to more poverty, higher rates of being on public assistance and lower rates of job stability. And now this study shows it is having mental health implications for girls," McCarty said in a statement.

    The study was drawn from data on more than 800 people in Seattle, Washington, and included people from 18 schools in high-crime neighborhoods.

    The group was split evenly by gender and nearly half were white, 24 percent were black, 21 percent were Asian-American and the rest were from other groups.

    Overall, 45 percent of the girls and 68 percent of the boys in the study experienced a major school failure, but 22 percent of the girls later became depressed compared with 17 percent for the boys.

    "This gender paradox shows that while school failure is more atypical for girls, it appears to have more severe consequences when it does occur," McCarty said.

    美國研究人員本周二稱，學業失敗對女生的影響大于男生。

    研究人員稱，中學還沒畢業就被開除，或被要求休學或輟學的女生在21歲前患嚴重抑郁癥的可能性比有相似經歷的男生大。

    華盛頓大學的研究人員凱羅琳•麥卡蒂說：“學業失敗對女生的影響更大。”她負責的這項研究在《青少年健康期刊》上發表。

    麥卡蒂在一份聲明中稱：“我們原來只知道學業失敗會導致貧困加劇、依賴公共救助的人群比例升高以及工作穩定性下降等問題。而目前的這項研究表明，學業失敗對女生的心理健康也會造成影響。”

    研究數據來源于對西雅圖和華盛頓的800多人和18個犯罪高發區的受訪者調查。

    研究人員按照性別將研究對象平均分為兩組，其中近一半是白人，24%是黑人，21%是亞裔美國人，以及一些其它種族的人。

    總的說來，分別有45%的女生和68%的男生經歷過重大學業失敗，但22%的女生后來因此患上了抑郁癥，而這一比例在男生中僅為17%。

    麥卡蒂說：“這一‘性別悖論’說明，雖然學業失敗在女生中并不常見，但當它真的發生時，后果會更嚴重。