Marital adjustment and bio-social actors as predictors of depression among perceived highly stressed couples in Ondo State, Nigeria

Abstract

A continuous threat to the efficiency of human functioning, interaction and relationship due to depression serves as a rationale for this study, and it shows the need to gauge the influence of selected bio-social factors and marital adjustment on depression among perceived highly stressed couples in Ondo State, Nigeria. Adopting a correlational design, 175 highly stressed couples were selected using a multi-stage sampling technique (stratified, proportionate, purposive and random sampling techniques) and responded to standardised measures. Frequency and percentage were adopted to describe the bio-social factors of the respondents. Pearson Product Moment Correlation was used to test the inter-relationship among the variables, while a two-step hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. The result revealed that gender, religion and educational qualification predicted depression among highly stressed couples. It was also indicated that depression decreases among highly stressed couples along with a significant increase in their marital adjustment. It was concluded that bio-social factors, such as gender, religion, educational qualification, and marital adjustment, were significant predictors of depression. And factors such as age, family type, and nature of employment had no significant relationship with depression among perceived highly stressed couples.