Abstract
Depression is one of the most common psychological disorders that affect adolescents. In this study, we investigated how depression in adolescents relates to social support, religiosity, and spirituality in multivariate analyses. We also investigated whether age, gender and ethnicity are predictors of depression among adolescents in a faith-based high school. We measured social support using the Child and Adolescent Social Support Scale (CASSS), religiosity with the Duke University Religion Index (DUREL); spirituality with the Spiritual Well-Being Scale (SWBS); and depression with the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale for Children (CES-DC). Results of the bivariate analyses showed a significant negative association between depression and social support, religiosity, and spirituality (p –0.548, p = 0.00) was negatively related to depression in adolescents. The study found significant gender differences only in religiosity, while significant ethnic differences were only found in social support. Implications to education, practice, research and future directions of study are discussed.
Highlights
Depression is one of the most common psychological disorders that affect adolescents [1] and remains a huge public health problem
The primary objective of the present study was to examine whether adolescent depression was related to combinations of social support, religiosity, and spirituality in a faith-based high school and, if so, the amount of variance in depression that can be accounted for by the relationships
It is the first to explore how adolescent depression relates to social support, religiosity, and spirituality in multivariate analyses
Summary
Depression is one of the most common psychological disorders that affect adolescents [1] and remains a huge public health problem. Studies show that adolescent depression is prevalent in the United States [5] [6] and worldwide [7] [8]. Previous studies show that the occurrence of depression during adolescence increases the risk of future episodes in later life [5], but it is associated with academic difficulties [6] [10], school dropout [11], antisocial behaviors [12] [13] [14], health risk behaviors such as smoking, violence, drug use, unprotected sex, drunk driving and driving without seatbelt [15] [16] [17], and suicide risk [18]. With evidence of substantial health risks associated with depression, there is a need to explore how adolescent depression relates to combinations of factors that may protect the individual from depression
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