Relationship between Family Dynamics Characteristics and Depression among College Students in Southwest China

Abstract

This study adopted the revised Self-assessment of Family Dynamics (SSFD), the Centre for Evaluation of Streaming Depression (CES-D), and the Chinese version of the Interpersonal Reactivity Indicator (IRI-C) by Zeng Weinan and others to investigate the family dynamics, depressive status, and empathy of college students in Sichuan, Chongqing, and Guizhou. The results showed that: (1) Male students’ cognitive empathy scores were significantly lower than female students; (2) The overall depression score of college students in Chongqing municipality was significantly lower than that of college students in Sichuan and Guizhou provinces; (3) Higher vocational college students’ depression scores were significantly lower than undergraduate college students; (4) The overall depression scores of college students from rural areas were significantly higher than those of college students from urban areas; (5) The only child had significantly lower depression scores than the non-only child, and significantly higher scores on all dimensions of systemic family dynamics than the non-only child; (6) Depression had a highly significant correlation with all dimensions of family dynamics traits, and depression was highly significantly associated with cognitive empathy; (7) Cognitive empathy partially mediated the relationship between illness conceptions, systemic logic, and depression, with the proportion of indirect effect accounting for the total effect of 9.18% and 2.64% respectively.