Sex differences in adolescent care requests

Care requests and attitude to health are different according to individual's gender. Epidemiological data concerning teenagers show how these differences rapidly occur during puberty and seem to take a part in the global sexualization process, specific of this period of life. Female teenagers express more important expectations and needs than their male fellows. They take more medical advice, have several complaints, take more drugs, although consulting grounds and somatic pathologies are appreciably the same for both sexes. Concerning mental diseases, the situation is even more obvious. Feminine over-representation, appearing in a spectacular manner during adolescence, is rather linked to the kind of disorders than to a purely quantitative discrepancy: depressive tendency, suicide attempts, eating disorders are obviously feminine, whereas boys are mainly found on the side of behaviour disorders, acted violence, accidents, suicide with an important over-mortality. These differences according to the subjects' sex should be known for the clinical presentation and the encountered risks assessment to improve the evaluation, the prevention and the taking charge of teenagers health needs.