Paternal attachment, negative life events, automatic thoughts and depressive symptoms in Malaysian adolescents

Numerous studies documented the risk for depressive symptoms increases during adolescence. Thus it is imperative to examine factors related to its occurrence. The origins of depressive symptoms additionally have yet to be fully understood. Therefore, it is deemed necessary to identify the mechanism that triggers its occurrence in order to expand knowledge about the etiology of depressive symptoms amongst Malaysian adolescents. This cross-sectional study aimed to investigate the relationships between paternal attachment (i.e., secure, anxious fearful, responsiveness and approachability), negative life events (NLE) and depressive symptoms. In addition, automatic thoughts variable was tested as a mediator and sex as a moderator for these relationships. The sample comprised 1030 secondary school adolescents aged between 13 and 19 years (mean = 15.36) from the states of Pulau Pinang, Kelantan, Kuala Lumpur and Johor who were selected using probability proportional to size cluster sampling. The adolescents provided information by completing self-report measures on the study variables. Structural equation modeling was performed using AMOS to test the study hypothesized model. A measurement model was developed to validate the study measures before conducting structural model testing. The model revealed an excellent fit (χ2=372.558, df =103, χ2/ df =3.653, p