Factors associated with depressed mood among adolescents in Northern Ireland
✍ Scribed by Michael Donnelly
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1999
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 118 KB
- Volume
- 9
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1052-9284
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
This paper presents data on the pattern of self-reported depressed mood among a sample of 887 11±15 year-old secondary school students living in Northern Ireland. In addition, the paper examines the association between depressed mood and stressful life events, family support and perceived control. Analysis of variance of mean depression scores did not reveal main or interaction eects for age (school year) or sex. However, a school year  sex interaction eect was found when the variation in depression scores due to family cohesiveness (or support) was partialled out in an ANCOVA. In years 1 and 2, males reported higher mean depression scores than females, whereas the pattern was reversed in years 3 and 4. The covariates of stressful life events and perceived control did not signi®cantly aect the pattern of mean depression scores. This would tend to suggest that the sex dierence in depression found consistently with adults may begin to emerge in middle adolescence; and that the nature and level of family relationships may in¯uence the prevalence and pattern of adolescent depression. The study found a higher mean depression score and a larger proportion of `cases' (27%) than has been recorded in studies of young adolescents living outside Northern Ireland. However, the extent to which higher levels of symptomatology may be related to the politically unsettled nature of Northern Irish society is unclear.