The main purpose of this study was to examine the effects of parent-adolescent communication and adolescents' dysfunctional beliefs on adolescents’ depression of adolescent boys and girls. The subjects were 365 10th and 11th grade adolescents (192 b...
The main purpose of this study was to examine the effects of parent-adolescent communication and adolescents' dysfunctional beliefs on adolescents’ depression of adolescent boys and girls. The subjects were 365 10th and 11th grade adolescents (192 boys and 173 girls) who were attending high schools in Seoul and Gyoung-gi Do. Data were collected via questionnaires, rated by adolescents themselves and were analyzed by Structural Equation Modeling(SEM) using AMOS 21.0.
The main results of this study were as follows:
First, father-adolescent communication and mother-adolescent communication did not have a direct effect on adolescents' depression. Second, father-adolescent communication and mother-adolescent communication had an indirect effect on adolescents' depression through adolescents' dysfunctional beliefs. Finally, there were significant gender differences in indirect pathways from parent-adolescent communication to children's adolescents' depression through adolescents' dysfunctional beliefs. In other words, for boys, paternal communication influenced depression indirectly through dysfunctional beliefs, and for girls, maternal communication had an indirect effect on depression through dysfunctional beliefs.
In conclusion, parental communication affected adolescents' depression indirectly through adolescents' dysfunctional beliefs, and there were significant differences in pathways between boys and girls. Considering this gender differences, intervention programs of adolescents' depression need to focus on differential aspects based on gender of adolescents. Especially, the findings that boys were significantly affected by paternal communication and girls were influenced by maternal communication supported the same-sex linkage hypothesis. In addition, adolescents' dysfunctional beliefs was a major effect on adolescents' depression. This result confirmed that adolescents' intrapersonal characteristic, especially dysfunctional beliefs, was an important variable leading to adolescents' depression.