Preventing depressive symptoms in Chinese children

Three studies of depressive symptoms in Chinese school children were reported in this thesis. In the first study, we found that depressive symptoms were widely present in Chinese children; that depression was related to a variety of psychosocial factors including socio-economic status, family conflicts, and negative life events; and that children with more depressive symptoms had more dysfunctional social skills and lower academic achievement. In the second study, 185 Chinese children in Beijing were followed for eight months. We found that a pessimistic explanatory style was associated with higher concurrent levels of depression and higher levels of depression at subsequent testing periods. Furthermore, we found strong evidence that the interaction of a pessimistic explanatory style and negative life events predicted higher levels of future depression. Based on the results from the first two studies and the fact that there is a severe deficiency of qualified mental health professional in China, we adapted the Penn Prevention Program and developed a school-based intervention program for Chinese children. We implemented the intervention program in a group of 220 Chinese children, who were selected from a total initial sample of 1,425 students, based on their responses on two risk criteria: depressive symptoms and family conflict. The 220 children were randomly assigned to either the intervention group or the non-intervention control group. At both the post-intervention test and the three month follow up test, compared to controls, children who participated in the intervention program showed significantly fewer depressive symptoms and significantly more optimistic explanatory styles, even after the pre-intervention differences were statistically controlled. In addition, we found that the improvement in depressive symptoms from pre- to post-intervention were mediated by the improvement in explanatory style