The Relationship Between Stress Perception And Adolescent Depression

Depression is an individual feels unable to cope with the outside pressure, resulting in a negative mood, with a core of mood disorders, specific performance such as, frustration, helplessness, despair, worthlessness, and a decline in physical activity, along with a series of physically and psychologically uncomfortable symptoms. Depression and depression-related symptoms are very common in adolescent populations. Depression can affect the normal growth and development of adolescents as well as their school performance and their relationships with peers and family members, and even adolescent depression is a serious illness associated with substantial morbidity and mortality. The dangers of depression in young people cannot be ignored. Therefore, the study of adolescent depression and its associated risk factors is very important.Perceived stress can be defined as when individual faced with certain stimuli events encountered in daily life and unfavorable factors, psychological tension and discomfort felt, reflects an individual the tensions and out of control. Depression and perceived stress and social support are closely related. When a pressure is long-standing, depression may develop without the individual realizing it. Social support can affect the extent to which people perceive stress. When individuals get adequate social support, it is possible to reduce an individual of perceived stress, which may ease depression occur.Previous studies have focused on the relationship between perceived stress and depression as well as on the roles of social support in the relationship between perceived stress and depression. However, neither type of study has yet explored the specific effects of different subtypes of social support (i.e., friend support, family support, or others’ support) on the relationship between perceived stress and depression among adolescents, nor has research examined the effects of gender on the roles of the different subtypes of social support in the relationship between perceived stress and depression among adolescents. This study aimed to investigate the family support, friend support and others’support in the relationship between perceived stress and depressive symptoms, and to further explore the moderating effects of gender. Based on previous literature, the research objective of this study include the following aspects: (1) Test in high school students, relationship model among perceived stress, social support, depression.(2) Investigate the effect of friend support, family support and others’ support in the relationship between perceived stress and depression.(3) Explore gender differences of the three relationship models of perceived stress, social support and depression.This study uses a short version of the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale, the perceived social support scale, the Perceived Stress Scale as the measurement tool. The research results show that:(1) Adolescent perceived stress and adolescent depression were significantly positively related, the more obvious perceived stress, the more intense depression. Perceived stress and social support (i.e., friend support, family support and others’ support) were significantly negatively correlated. Depression and social support (i.e., friend support, family support and others’support) were significantly negatively correlated.(2) Adolescent family support, friend support and others’support could mediate the effect of perceived stress on depressive symptoms. Specifically, family support was a moderated mediator in which gender played the moderating role, compared with girls, moderation of family support is more significant for boys.(3) The relationship between perceived stress and depressive symptoms was moderated by friend support. In this context, gender played a moderating role on the moderating effect of friend support.Conclusions of this study are as follows:(1) The differences in depressive symptoms between boys and girls may be able to be explained by differences in the level of family support, friend support, and others’ support.(2) Friend support may also moderate the relationship between perceived stress and depressive symptoms.(3) The power of both the mediation of family support and the moderation of friend support also differed between the genders.