한부모가족 청소년 자녀의 스트레스와 우울의 관계

The Relationship between Stress and Depression for Adolescents of Single-Parent Families: Moderating Effect of Self-Esteem, Quality of Family Relationship and Community Support

This study investigated the moderating effects of self-esteem, quality of family relationship, and community support and also examined the gender difference of those moderating effects for adolescents from single-parent families in the relationship between stress and depression. 616 adolescents from the data of “the study on support measures for children and adolescents' mental health promotion III” by the National Youth Policy Institute were included in the analysis. The results revealed that the three variables－self-esteem, quality of family relationship, and community support－have significant moderating effect in the relationship of stress affecting depression. In other words, as the adolescents perceived higher self-esteem, higher quality of family relationship, and more community support, their level of depression increased relatively slowly even if their stress increased. In addition, female adolescents showed significantly higher levels of stress and depression and lower levels of self-esteem, quality of family relationship, and community support compared to male adolescents. The size of moderating effects was also smaller for the female adolescents indicating that more attention should be given to the female group. This study provides some suggestions for preventing the depression of adolescents from single-parent families. Especially this study states that special consideration is needed for developing various programs to increase the self-esteem of female adolescents.