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Shock News: Young People Are More Likely to Be Depressed if They're Goths

Who would have guessed?

Photo via Brian Ledgard

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Young people who identify as goths are at an increased risk of suffering from depression and more likely to self harm, according to a study that seems less the product of scientific rigor, more just written on the strength of yer da's hunch. Yer da, sat at the kitchen table, swinging a sausage around on a fork—"Thing is, these gothics," yer da's saying, "These gothics, Lynn, with their big clunky boots: sad though, aren't they?"—and he looks at you, yer da it does, with your layers of eyeliner, and your backcombed hair, and wallet chain on top of wallet chain, mesh vest covering your sweet "JESUS IS A CUNT" T-shirt, and he says: shitshow.

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Anyway, the Lancet Psychiatry report studied 3,694 15-year-olds based around Bristol, and found that—of those who identified as being "part of the goth subculture," i.e. anyone who owned a set of diabolo sticks, or a custom-made gas mask that they saved up their pocket money to order from America, or anything made out of leather with spikes on it—anyone who identified as being into those things were more likely to suffer from depression and to self harm. Researchers weren't "fully able to explain" the link, although apparently a tendency for goths to isolate themselves from society might be a factor. I didn't write it but you just heard an extremely loud 'UH, YEAH DOI?' sort of springing sound in your head, didn't you? Sometimes science is useless.

Researchers also shockingly revealed that teenagers were more likely to lean toward showing signs of depression at the age of 15 if they'd been bullied in the past, but the goth-depression link remains even if you factor that out.

"The extent to which young people self-identify with goth subculture may represent the extent to which at-risk young people feel isolated, ostracized, or stigmatized, by society," the University of Bristol's Dr. Rebecca Pearson said.

Remember goths, though? Pale-faced observers in the early 00s war between chavs and grebos. In provincial town centers up and down the country, chavs—in Burberry caps, the chavs, flicking cheap lighters and spitting on the ground, kissing with full tongues their Jodie Marsh calendar every night before they went to sleep—would line up opposite grebos—in their dark unwashed hoodies and wide jeans, grebos desperately begging their mums to subscribe to Sky so they could get Kerrang!, grebos in their own grimy little pubs, all of them, the grebo pubs, called The Hobgoblin, with substandard door policies and a playlist made up of six Green Day songs and that one by Papa Roach—and the goths would look on, eerily, from above a hill. And then the death cry would rattle out—"GREEEEEEEEEEEE–BOOOOOOOOO!"—and the chavs would march, cans of off-brand energy drink and Special Brew clouding out the sun, and the grebos would run, and then one of them would be caught, and ceremonially kicked and knuckled and spat on and laughed at. And then, at the end of the ritualistic shame, tears streaming down their little grebo face, one of the chavs—a lower chav, in the hierarchy, squeaky voiced and yet to steal their own car—one of the chavs would go up to the wounded grebo and hock one final loogy and say the immortal words: dirty grebo. And the goths would look on, like Switzerland, neutral and unbending, tutting, and thinking about absinthe.

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Ah, those were the days. Back in the early '00s, before we figured out how to make jeans fit. Back in the early '00s, where mankind could be cleaved neatly into three tribes, always warring, never overlapping. The early '00s, where Fred Durst singing about attacking someone with a chainsaw briefly masqueraded as the zeitgeist. Do I miss those days? Sometimes I do. Bring back goths, I say. Bring back fighting in town centers. Bring back playing with lighters, and noogying, and fake IDs.

Yeah, sorry, got a bit off topic there. Anyway, to review: Goths more likely to be sad, due to the implicit nature of being a goth. Next week, in science news: water—quite damp, sometimes, isn't it?

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