Adolescents’ Perceptions of Family Connectedness, Intrinsic Religiosity, and Depressed Mood

Abstract

Using a sample of 248 ninth and tenth grade students at public high schools, we examined adolescents' perceptions of family connectedness, intrinsic religiosity, and adolescents' gender in relation to depressed mood and whether intrinsic religiosity and gender moderated the association of aspects of family connectedness to adolescent depressed mood. Using hierarchical multiple regression analyses we tested models separately for three forms of family connectedness (overall family cohesion, mothers' support, and fathers' support), intrinsic religiosity, and depressed mood. In each model, family connectedness was negatively associated with depressed mood. Intrinsic religiosity was not significantly associated with depressed mood. However, in the mothers' support model, both a twoway interaction (mothers' support 9 intrinsic religiosity) and a three-way interaction (adolescents' gender 9 mothers' support 9 intrinsic religiosity) were significantly related to depressed mood. In the two-way interaction, higher intrinsic religiosity was a moderator, strengthening the association between mothers' support and depressed mood. In the three-way interaction, gender differences were found. For boys, high intrinsic religiosity strengthened the association between mothers' support and depressed mood. Among girls, when mothers' support was low, intrinsic religiosity provided an additional source of connectedness in protecting against depressed mood. Our findings show that connectedness in overall family systems, mother-adolescent subsystems, and father-adolescent subsystems are all important to emotional resilience in adolescents by protecting against depressed mood. Future studies of adolescent religiosity may benefit from including diverse forms of family connectedness in understanding the protective processes provided by aspects of religiosity in promoting adolescents' emotional resilience.

Exploring the Multivariate Relationships between Adolescent Depression and Social Support, Religiosity, and Spirituality in a Faith-Based High School

“…Consistent with previous studies [21] [23] [24], the present study found weak to moderate, but significant bivariate correlations between depression and social support, religiosity, and spirituality; an indication that social support, frequent participation in religious activities, and spiritual interconnectedness are good for mental and emotional well-being of adolescents. Yet, in some other studies, some aspects of religiosity such as private religious practices were not associated with depression in adolescents [26] [31] [33].…”

“…The relationship between adolescent depression and social support has been extensively investigated in empirical studies. Higher levels of friend support, family support, and overall emotional support have been consistently associated with lower odds of adolescent depression [21] [26] [27] [28]. Social relationships may promote well-being by enhancing an individual's feelings of predictability and stability, maintaining positive emotional states, promoting an individual's sense of purpose, belonging, and security and enhancing self-esteem through social recognition of self-worth [29].…”

“…Religious attendance, selfranked religiousness and positive religious experience have been associated with lower depressive symptoms in adolescents [23] [31] [32]. However, intrinsic religiosity, private religious practices such as private prayer and reading spiritual books were not associated with depression in adolescents [26] [31] [33]. Spiri-…”

Las orientaciones religiosas extrínseca e intrínseca: validación de la “Age Universal” I-E Scale

“…Pero, si bien inicialmente esta distinción acerca de las orientaciones religiosas se fundamentó en distinguir aquellos tipos de religiosidad que podían presentar una mayor tendencia al prejuicio de aquellos que no, posteriormente se produjo una expansión en cuanto a los beneficios de comprender con mayor profundidad el fenómeno de la religiosidad en relación a otras áreas de la psicología, como la salud mental (Maltby, 2002). Por ejemplo, existen trabajos que señalan cómo las orientaciones religiosas permiten favorecer la calidad de vida de pacientes terminales (Piedmont & Friedman, 2012), afrontar el estrés (Laufer & Solomon, 2011;McMahon & Biggs, 2012), la depresión (Davison, McCabe, Knight & Mellor, 2012;Houltberg, Henry, Merten & Robinson, 2011) o la ansiedad (Maltby et al, 2010).…”

The Development of a Depression Preventive Intervention for Adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

“…Maternal and paternal emotional support are significantly associated with adolescent depressive symptoms (Houltberg, Henry, Merten, & Robinson, 2011) and lower levels of positive parental behaviors have prospectively predicted adolescent depressive symptoms at a 2.5 year follow-up (Schwartz et al, 2012). Low levels of parental support have been found to correlate amongst adolescents and young adults experiencing high levels of depressive symptoms (i.e., Holahan et al, 1995;Pettit et al, 2011;Stice et al, 2004).…”