This study examined the moderator effect of social support on the relationship between stress and depression of university students. A total of 632 undergraduate students completed the measures of perceived stress, perceived social support, and depression. Hierarchical regression analysis showed that social support moderated the association between stress and depression. Undergraduate students with high stress reported higher scores in depression than those with low stress with low social support level. However, the impact of stress on depression was much smaller in the high social support group compared with that in the low social support group.

Introduction

Studies that focus on college students’ mental health problems are gradually increasing because of significant increase in the incidence of mental disorder among college students [1-3]. Depression is a common mental disorder mainly characterized by significant and constant down in spirits [4]. Emotional depression varies from moodiness to grief, low self-esteem, depression, and even pessimism, which may lead to suicidal attempt or behavior [5,6]. Previous studies have found that depressive symptoms are widespread in college students [7]. Surveys have found that the Chinese mainland college student depression rate is 15% to 35% [8-10].

Stress, a mental experience caused by demand and failure, is very common in our lives [5]. However, stress may further cause negative emotions, such as depression and anxiety, and may even hinder normal development of the personality and behavior of a person if not properly controlled and responded to [11]. Depression is created through interaction of various factors, including environmental and individual factors [12]. After summarizing the results obtained from nearly twenty years of research about the relationship between stress and depression, Kessler indicated that stress is closely related with depression and stress intensity and degree of depression have a dose-response relationship[13,14]. However, not all people will have depression when under pressure. The depression degree of different individuals varies even under the same stress conditions [15,16], indicating that other variables affect the relationship between stress and depression.

Social support is the care or help from others that an individual can feel, notice, or accept [17,18]. As an important environmental resource in an individual’s social life, social support affects a person’s physical and mental health and behavior patterns, and has a very close relationship with the generation, development, control, and prevention of depression [19-21]. A good social support can provide protection for an individual under stress and has common gaining function on maintaining an individual’s good emotional experience [22].

Existing studies on graduate student groups have focused on mutual relationship among stress, social support, and depression. We consider that the mental mechanism research on depression generation should deeply discuss the cooperation and antagonism between different factors. Based on previous studies, we assume that relationship between stress and depression is affected by social support, a moderating variable between stress and depression.

Discussion

According to the SDS norm standard of Chinese college students, the total SDS score was greater than or equal to 41 points, which is deemed as the bound of depression [29]. The detection rate of people with depression was 18.7%, demonstrating that the incidence of depression among the college students is rather high and should be given more attention [9].

The correlation analysis in this research showed that graduate students depression has a significant positive correlation with stress, indicating that stress is an important factor that affects depression generation. The same results were found in previous researches about stress and depression regarding different groups as research objects [15,33,34]. College students are carrying higher expectations from society, family, and individual, and are suffering from various stresses including study, occupation, marriage, and family [35,36]. The stresses caused by negative life events may make students depressed, such as heavy burden of study, growing occupation or entrance stress, failure in love, and dispute or misunderstanding with classmates [37-39].

This research found that relationship between stress and depression is affected by social support, compared with the team of high social support. A closer relationship was found between stress and depression in the low social support team. Social support plays a significant regulating effect on the relationship between stress and depression and is an important environmental resource [20,40]. An individual’s good social support network allows him/her to gain self-esteem and self-efficacy easier, thereby resisting the generation of negative emotions such as depression [41-43]. When an individual is under stress, social support makes him/her underestimate the hazards and the verities of stress by enhancing their coping capacities perceived. Social support can also provide problem solving strategies to the individual, reduce the importance of the problem, and alleviate the harmful effects of stress experience [42,44,45]. These effects can reduce the intensity of the relationship between stress and depression, thereby lowering the degree and generation of depression.

The results of this research suggest that the high depressive symptoms among college students should be brought to the attention of relevant departments. To prevent college student depression, relevant departments should both optimize the environment of college student study and life, try to decrease the generation of negative life events, provide adequate social support for college students, and enhance their cognitive and coping capacities to improve their mental qualities.

This article is adapted from Xingmin Wang, Lin Cai, Jing Qian and Jiaxi Peng, Social support moderates stress effects on depression. Source article. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.