engleski

Attributional style and depression in adolescents

Cognitive models of depression assume a key role of negative thoughts in the development of depression, with an emphasis on perceptive and attributional styles, and ones belief system. The hopelessness theory is a recent cognitive model of depression, according to which maladaptive attributional patterns in interaction with stress lead to the development and aggravation of depressive symptoms. It also suggests that attributional patters and their interaction with stress are more closely related to the specific constelation of symptoms, called Hopelessness depression, than to general depressive symptoms, and that hopelessness mediates this relationship. The purpose of this study was to test the etiological predictions of the hopelessness theory of depression in a sample of early to middle adolescents. The sample consisted of 419 primary and high school students. Results showed that attributional dimensions for negative events are related to symptoms of both depression and hopelessness depression, but after the effect of self-esteem was partialed out, attributional dimensions for negative events and their interaction with stress predicted only hopelessness depression symptoms, and not general depressive symptoms. Also, results did not support that hopelessness is a mediator in the association between attributions – stress interaction and hopelessness depression symptoms.

Cognitive models of depression; hopelessness theory; depression; hopelessness depression; attributional dimensions.

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