Interpersonal Approach to Depression: The Contributory, Moderating, and Countervailing Mechanism of Reassurance-Seeking
Date Issued
2004
Date
2004
Author(s)
Huang, Tien-Hao
DOI
zh-TW
Abstract
Coyne (1976b) proposed an interpersonal theory of depression to portrait the nature of the interaction between depressed people and significant others. Such interaction will eventually produces an interpersonal space whereby symptoms of depressed people will breed negative emotion and rejection from others. More important, he believed that these perceived rejections from others would in turn lead to the maintenance and/or deterioration of depressive symptoms in depressive individuals. Joiner and his colleague further postulated that reassurance-seeking serves as a core element in the interpersonal theory of depression. To demonstrate their theory, he and his colleague completed a series of research since 1992 on this topic and their findings mainly showed that reassurance-seeking not only serves to “moderate” the effects of depression, but also plays as a “vulnerability” role of depression. However, in-depth literature review suggests that there still exists a great sense of vagueness about the role and mechanisms of reassurance-seeking in depression arising from unclearly defined variables, inadequate measurements, and the paradoxical hypotheses in past discourses and studies. Therefore, the present thesis introduces three mechanisms of reassurance-seeking on different depression stages through a dialectical analysis process, i.e., contributory effect during the pre-depression period, countervailing effect during the depression period, and the moderating effect during the post-depression period.
Three studies were conducted to examine: a) the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of Reassurance-Seeking Scale; b) the contributory and moderating effect of reassurance-seeking using prospective strategy; and c) the countervailing effect of reassurance-seeking by comparing depressed patients with normal control. Study 1 reported that the Chinese version of Reassurance-Seeking Scale yielded satisfactory psychometric properties and demonstrated that reassurance-seeking is a reasonably cohesive, replicable, and valid construct. Part 1 of the study 2 prospectively assessed a group of initially symptom-free participants to show that reassurance-seeking predicts future depressive reactions to stress and is mediated by others’ negative responses. The finding from this part is supportive of the vulnerability/ contribution hypothesis of reassurance-seeking. Part 2 of the study 2 prospectively assessed a group of initially depressed participants to investigate whether reassurance-seeking moderates the relation of initial depressive symptoms and negative responses of others with future depressive symptoms. The results are also supportive of the maintainance/ moderation hypothesis of reassurance-seeking. Study 3 demonstrated that reassurance-seeking covaries with social support satisfaction in non-positive illusionlized, depressed people. Our data again provide evidence for the countervailing hypothesis. Specifically, the absence of the mediating effect of “others’ negative responses” of initial depression on future depression is an unexpected result in the study. Some possible explanations for this finding in the context of statistical, conceptual, cultural, and temporal viewpoints will be provided. Finally, in the last part of the thesis, we discuss some clinical implications of reassurance seeking.
Subjects
他人反應
人際模式
尋求再保證
憂鬱
正向謬誤
interpersonal theory
depression
responses of others
positive illusion
reassurance-seeking
Type
other
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