The Relationships among Family Functioning, Adult Depression and Social Information Processing

• Main Authors: Wan-chin Li, 李宛津
• Other Authors: Emily Liu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/40223294789738433825

碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 臨床心理學系碩士班 === 96 === Depression has been regarded as one of the three major diseases of the 21st century, along with AIDS and cancer. Among the factors that have been associated with its relapse and prognosis, family and cognitive processes are closely related to depression. The main objectives of the present study were to explore the relationships among family functioning, depression and social information processing (SIP) in adults, and to examine the potential mediating role of social information processing in the relationship between family functioning and depression. Four-hundred-ninety university students (160 male & 330 female) participated in the study. Participants completed the Chinese version of the McMaster Family Assessment Device (FAD), the Social Information Processing Scale – Family version (SIPS-F), the Center of Epidemiological Study – Depression (CES-D), and the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II). The results indicated that family functioning, social information processing and depression were significantly correlated to each other. In addition, it was found that family functioning had a positive effect on the interpretation stage of SIP, and that it had a negative effect on the goal-response generation stage of SIP. However, family functioning was not found to have a significant effect on the final response evaluation stage. Family functioning and social information processing both had an effect on depression. Further, there was an indirect effect of family functioning on depression via the mediating variable of interpretation. Family functioning was not found to have an indirect effect on depression via goal-response generation or response evaluation. Discussion: Given unhealthy family functioning, individuals with higher levels of depression are more likely to interpret information using hostile, internal, stable and global attributions, and to have difficulties in generating effective responses based on past experiences; as a result, they are more likely to respond in a passive or purely affective manner. Family functioning exerted the largest effect on depression via one’s interpretation of external events. Research and clinical implications, limitation, and suggestions for future research are delineated.