| This study investigates how maladaptive perfectionism relates to depression among Asian international students by examining the mediating effects of acculturative stress and perceived social support. Given the recent emphasis on assessing situation-specific stress (Dunkley, Zuroff, & Blankstein, 2003) and examining the generalizability of the stress-mediation hypothesis (Hewitt & Flett, 2002; Hewitt, Flett, & Ediger, 1996) and the social disconnection model (Hewitt, Flett, Sherry, & Caelian, 2006), both direct and indirect relationships were hypothesized among the four constructs of interest, i.e., maladaptive perfectionism, acculturative stress, perceived social support, and depression. Specifically, this study tested acculturative stress and perceived social support as mediators of the relation between maladaptive perfectionism, defined as a tendency to set rigidly high standards and to be displeased with anything less, and depression. It was hypothesized that depressed individuals who have maladaptive perfectionism could be explained partly by their acculturative stress and perceived social support.;Participants in the study were Asian international students not from an English-speaking country (including Canada), who had been in the U.S. for less than 10 years. Maladaptive perfectionism, the independent variable, was measured with the Concern over Mistakes and Doubts about Actions subscales of the Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (FMPS; Frost, Marten, Lahart, & Rosenblate, 1990) and the Discrepancy subscale of the Almost Perfect Scale—Revised (APS-R; Slaney, Rice, Mobley, Trippi, & Ashby, 2001). Acculturative stress and perceived social support, the mediator variables, were assessed using the Acculturative Stress Scale for International Students (ASSIS; Sandhu & Asrabadi, 1994) and the Reliable Alliance, Attachment, and Guidance subscales of Social Provision Scales (SPS; Cutrona & Russells, 1987), respectively. Depression, the criterion variable, was measured using the Center for Epidemiological Studies—Depression Scale (CES-D; Radloff, 1977).;Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) showed that while acculturative stress partially mediated a strong association between maladaptive perfectionism and depression, perceived social support was not a significant predictor of depression. Thus, the hypothesized mediation effect of perceived social support relating maladaptive perfectionism to depression was not tested and thus not supported. Further implications, limitations, and areas for future research are discussed. |
