Hopelessness as a mediator of the association between social support and depressive symptoms: Findings of a study of men with HIV.

Abstract

Data from a prospective longitudinal study were used to investigate whether hopelessness mediates the association between social support and depression, as hypothesized by L. Y. Abramson, G. I. Metalsky, and L. B. Alloy (1989). Measures of hopelessness, social support, and depression were administered to 103 HIV-infected men and readministered 6 months later. Findings indicated that low baseline social support predicted increases in hopelessness and depression. Increases in hopelessness predicted increases in depression after controlling for baseline social support. Low baseline social support did not predict increased depression when hopelessness was controlled statistically.

The role of social support on resilience, posttraumatic growth, hopelessness, and depression among children of HIV-infected parents in mainland China

“…Study among HIV-positive men showed that hopelessness mediated the association between social support and depression (Johnson et al, 2001).…”

Relationships Among Functional Social Support, HIV-Related Stigma, Social Problem Solving, and Depressive Symptoms in People Living With HIV: A Pilot Study

“…The association between depressive symptoms and social support is supported by both cross-sectional (Mizuno, Purcell, Dawson-Rose, Parsons, & the SU-DIS Team, 2003;Sikkema et al, 2000;van Servellen, Aguirre, Sarna, & Brecht, 2002) and longitudinal (Johnson et al, 2001) studies and can be divided into functional and structural types of social support. Functional support pertains to social relationships, whereas structural support is concerned with social networks (Cohen & Syme, 1985).…”

The effect of perceived and actual social support on the mental health of HIV-positive persons

“…Researchers have examined the role of perceived social support in improving the lives of HIV-positive individuals (Friedland et al, 1996;Hays et al, 1990Hays et al, , 1992Kelly et al, 1993;Leserman et al, 1992). Most suggest that social support buffers stress-related or stress-inducing crises, such as depression (Hays et al, 1990(Hays et al, , 1992Johnson et al, 2001;Serovich et al, 2001;Silver et al, 2003;Turner et al, 1993), hopelessness (Johnson et al, 2001), physical distress (Leserman et al, 1999), disclosure to sexual partners (Kalichman et al, 2003;Marks et al, 1991) and psychological well being (Hays et al, 1990;Serovich et al, 2001).…”