Thursday, 13 December 2012

Academic stress, depression & suicidal ideation


Inspired by the article posted by fellow course-mate Edwin about academic stress and suicidal ideation, I decided to look into this area in my blog (thanks Edwin).  Specifically the article stated that adolescent depression is a mediator (as a third variable) for academic stress and suicide ideation.  This means the significance of the relationship between academic stress and suicidal ideation was significantly reduced in magnitude when depression was included in the research model.  This has huge implications on interventions because purely focusing on reducing academic stress may not be as effective as one would hope.  One should also look into addressing depression. 
 
I have mentioned in my previous posts the role of parents in preventing adolescents and young adults’ suicidal attempts (see post on 28 Oct).  To what extent parenting is responsible for causing major depression?  According to a research on perceived parenting and risk for major depression in Chinese women (Gao et al. 2012), it was found that high level of authoritarianism were associated with an increased risk for major depression while high levels of warmth were associated with a decreased risk for major depression.  This finding is the same as that in Western countries.  What is most interesting is that high level of protectiveness from both mothers and fathers were associated with a decreased risk for major depression, which is the opposite pattern of that observed in the Western samples.  One explanation the authors provided is that perhaps in mainland China, the father has a psychological role in a child therefore women in China have a different interpretation of the meaning of “protectiveness” when coming from the father.  Whilst more research is needed to confirm the effects of “protectiveness”, adolescents and young adults can make good use of a bit more warmth, caring and respect from their parents.  The next question is what stops the parents from doing so despite it is quite an obvious behavior?

Perhaps the answer is that the parents themselves are not happy!  According to today’s report in the South China Morning Post, “middle-class people earning less than HK$40,000 a month are the least satisfied with their lot, according to an annual “happiness” index.  But Hongkongers as a whole are less happy this year – with the index slipping from 71.3 to 70.5, the Lingnan University survey found.”  Well, it seems the simple answer to academic stress, depression and suicide ideation are rooted from staying happy. 


Reference

Gao, J., Li, Y., Cai., Chen, Y., Shen, S., Wei, Y., …Tao, M. (2012).  Perceived parenting and risk for major depression in Chinese women.  Psychological Medicine, 42, 921-930. Doi:10.1017/S0033291711001942

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