The Relationship Between Perceived Pressure And Depression Of College Students: A Moderated Mediation Model

Depression is the primary mental problem that seriously damages the physical and social functions of undergraduate students in China.Mindfulness practice is the potentially effective method to prevent high prevalence of depression among undergraduate students in universities and colleges.In most of the mindfulness practice at present,mindfulness-based cognitive therapy that is widely applied in depressed patients is simply transferred to healthy undergraduate students or undergraduate students with high depression symptoms.However,the transference is short of strong support from the empirical research,especially in the psychological mechanism of depression formation.This study aimed to firstly explore the formation mechanism of depression among undergraduate students,including the effect of perceived stress on depression as well as the mediating effect of attribution style and the moderating effect of positive psychological capital and mindfulness,and then establish the novel mindfulness cognitive practice protocol that is suitable for undergraduate students based on traditional mindfulness cognitive therapy in combination with the above results from the perspective of attribution,mindfulness and positive psychological capital.In the present study,participants were 630 undergraduate students recruited from a university in Nanjing city,China.They self-reported their psychological states with perceived stress scale,attribution style questionnaire,positive psychological questionnaire,five facet mindfulness questionnaire and center for epidemiologic studies depression scale.The results revealed that perceived stress played a significant impact on depression through its direct effect and the partial mediation effect of attribution style among undergraduate students.Positive psychological capital could significantly moderate the negative effect of perceived stress on attribution style where the predictive effect of perceived stress on the attribution style would be gradually decreased with psychological capital.Mindfulness could significantly moderate the effect of attribution style on depression where the attribution style could significantly and negatively predict depression only among students with low mindfulness.Moreover,act consciously as one subdimension of mindfulness could moderate the relationship between attribution style and depression where the effect of the attribution style on depression was only significant for students with a low level of awareness and action.In summary,perceived pressure could influence the depression level through the mediation of attribution style among undergraduate students where positive psychological capital could moderate the first half pathway of the mediation model and mindfulness moderate the second half pathway of the mediation model.The above results implied that mindfulness practice in combination with reducing stress experiences,establishing valid attribution and enhancing positive psychological capital might be have certain theoretical and practical significance in school mental education.Based on the implication,the traditional mindfulness cognitive therapy was modified for preventing high prevalence of depression among undergraduate students.