engleski

Parental Attachment and Cognitive Factors in University Students’ Depressive Symptoms

Many universities recently report about increasing number of depressed and suicidal students (Roussis & Wells, 2008). It is well known that depressive symptoms may play a significant role in students' academic adjustment and their achievements. Our data have shown that depressive symptoms in failing students contribute to their drop-out from college. In order to develop effective preventive and early intervention programs, it is important to recognize the factors that could contribute to students' depression. Besides current cognitive models of depression, we also consider the role of quality of parental attachment through internal working model of self (Wei, Mallinckrodt, Larson & Zakalik, 2005) . The main goal of the present research was to check the contribution of specific cognitive factors in students' depression at the second year of study, after controlling for neuroticism, quality of parental attachment and their depression when starting college. Representative sample of 492 freshmen at University of Rijeka has been assessed during their first semester (BDI, BFI, and Parental Attachment Questionnaire) and the fourth semester (BDI, CSRL, Negative Automatic Thoughts during Learning and Taking Exam Questionnaire). The results of hierarchical regression analysis have shown that beliefs about their abilities not influencing their achievement, perception of academic failure as loss and negative automatic thoughts related to fear of disappointing parents contribute to students' depressive symptoms at the second year of college, after controlling for neuroticism and parental attachment. Neuroticism and parental attachment contribute to depressive symptoms at the first year, but are not significant predictors of BDI results at the second year, after cognitive variables have been introduced in the analysis. The results stress the importance of cognitive interventions in development of preventive and early intervention strategies with depressed students. The results also confirm still significant role of parents in emerging adulthood.

parental attachment ; cognitive factors ; university students ; depressive symptoms

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