A Prospective Study of Enhancing Attributions and Recovery from Depression
Date Issued
2006
Date
2006
Author(s)
Li, Chia-Hsiu
DOI
zh-TW
Abstract
The main purpose of the present study was to investigate the Model of Recovery from Depression proposed by Needles and Abramson（1990）, and to attempt discovering the mechanism of spontaneous remission of dysphoric individuals. Hopelessness Theory of Depression（Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989）indicated that when negative life events occurred, individuals who had depressogenic attributional style tended to attribute them to stable and global causes which would thus produce hopelessness and lead to symptoms of depression. On the contrary, the Model of Recovery from Depression postulated that when depressed individuals with enhancing attributional style（i.e., the tendency to attribute positive events to stable and global causes）were confronted with positive life events, the interaction between them, would initiate the restoration of hopefulness, and then lead to the recovery from depression. However, the methodologies and results of the previous related empirical studies were inconsistent. All of the empirical studies which examined the Model of Recovery from Depression used “reduction of hopelessness” to represent the “restoration of hopefulness”. However, hopefulness and hopelessness may not be the two ends of the same dimension. Moreover, previous studies used either real or hypothetical situations to test attributions and let to inconsistent conclusions. Furthermore, prior studies which examined the enhancing attributional style, positive life events, or the interaction between these two variables to predict the restoration of hopefulness and the reduction of depressive symptoms had not yet received the consensus. In consideration of the above inconsistencies, this study attempted to investigate the problems with dysphoric undergraduates by examining three hypotheses: (1) The interaction of positive life events and enhancing attributional style for positive life events will predict enhancing state attributions. (2) Enhancing state attributions will predict increase of hopefulness. (3) Increase of hopefulness will predict decrease in symptoms of hopelessness depression. Study one tested psychometric characteristics of the Chinese State Hope Scale developed in this study with a sample of 265 undergraduates. Study two recruited 61 dysphoric undergraduates and adopted the prospective longitudinal design, in which the state hope, depressive mood, state attributions, and uplifts were repeatedly measured once a week for four times within a duration of three weeks. At Time 1, we also assessed their attributional style. The results showed that the combined main effects of enhancing state attributions and uplifts predicted increase of hopefulness. In addition, both the increase of hopefulness and interaction of enhancing state attributions and uplifts predicted decrease in symptoms of hopelessness depression. These results generally met the hypotheses of the present study and the Model of Recovery from Depression. Nevertheless, contradictory to our hypotheses, internal and global attributional style for the previous positive life events contrarily predicted increase of symptoms of hopelessness depression. The result may be due to the diversities of the study methods, the characteristics of the participants, or the influences of cultural differences. Finally, we discussed the contributions and the clinical applications of the present study, addressed the possible limitations of the study, and provided some directions to carry on further researches.
Subjects
憂鬱復原
希望
提升性歸因風格
提升性狀態歸因
情緒上揚事件
前瞻性研究
recovery from depression
hope
enhancing attributional style
enhancing state attributions
uplifts
prospective study
Type
other
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