The associations between stressful life events and depression among students in a university in Botswana

Leano Tumelo Hetolang · Kennedy Amone‐P’Olak

24 citations0/0 files storedSouth African Journal of Psychology

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Student Stress and Coping Mental Health Treatment and Access Health and Well-being Studies

Abstract

Depression is common among university students and often impacts their career development and health. Stressful life events might be associated with depression but remain to be studied among young adults, especially in non-Western settings. Depression and stressful life events were assessed in 304 students at a university in Botswana ( M = 21.56, standard deviation = 1.86) using the 21-item Beck’s Depression Inventory (BDI) and the 26-Item Social Readjustment Rating Scale. Regression models were fitted to study the associations between stressful life events and depression while a one-way between-subjects analysis of variance was performed to compare subjects with minimal, mild, moderate, and severe depression on reporting stressful life events. Depression was present in 22 % of the participants (severe in 8.2% and moderate in 13.8%). More than half of the participants reported 10 or more stressful life events. Stressful life events significantly predicted depression (β = .37, 0.13–0.60). When all the other stressful life events and gender were adjusted for each other, loss of a cell phone, tablet, or laptop and relationship difficulties with peers, parents, and lecturers independently predicted depression. Subjects with minimal, mild, moderate, and severe depression significantly differed on reporting stressful life events ( F(3, 300) = 12.69, p < .001). Depression is not only common but significantly and increasingly associated with reporting more stressful life events. Types of stressful life events such as relationship difficulties and losses were uniquely associated with depression and should be considered in planning interventions and treatment of depression on university campuses.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 24 citations exist upstream.

References

1961An Inventory for Measuring Depression 1967The social readjustment rating scale 1996Beck Depression Inventory–II 2002Risky families: Family social environments and the mental and physical health of offspring.2013The Epidemiology of Depression Across Cultures 1997THE EFFECTS OF STRESSFUL LIFE EVENTS ON DEPRESSION 2004Sex Differences in Aggression in Real-World Settings: A Meta-Analytic Review 2011Mobile phone use and stress, sleep disturbances, and symptoms of depression among young adults - a prospective cohort study

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.