Could there be a natural explanation for mood swings in adolescence? Why, it hardly seems possible. But this report from Reuters suggests otherwise:

Hormone paradox may help explain teen moodiness

This might help explain why teenagers act like, well, teenagers.

Researchers reported on Sunday that a hormone produced by the body in response to stress that normally serves to calm adults and younger children instead increases anxiety in adolescents.

They conducted experiments with female mice focusing on the hormone THP that demonstrated this paradoxical effect, and described the brain mechanism that explains it.

If, as the scientists suspect, the same thing happens in people, the phenomenon may help account for the mood swings and anxiety exhibited by many adolescents, they said.

“Teenagers don’t go around crazy all the time,” lead researcher Sheryl Smith, a professor of physiology and pharmacology at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center, said in a telephone interview.

“But it really is a mood swing where things seem fine and calm, and then the next thing is someone’s crying or angry,” she added. “And I think that’s why people have used the term ‘raging hormones.'” [full text]

Well, some people use the term “raging hormones.” A good many—or, to be more precise, a bad many—psychiatrists who are quick on the trigger when it comes to pathologizing and medicating children remain enamored of the term “bipolar disorder.” Regardless, those on the Phactory Pharm will still push their psychotropic meds and no doubt encourage the off-label use of such to treat the latest scourge of adolescence, RHD (Raging Hormone Disorder).