LOOKING TO SOCIAL SUPPORT IN DEPRESSION PREVENTION

Abstract

The importance of social support for mental health wellbeing has received consistent empirical support but the mechanisms affecting the support-wellbeing relationship are less clear due to the under-investigation of structural social support concepts and multifactor models. The present study extends the social support literature by investigating the Main Effects and Stress Buffering Models in a community sample of 95 young adults in Singapore. It also demonstrates the use of social network analysis from an egocentric perspective to investigate structural social support concepts. A pure stress buffering effect was found such that perceived social support moderated the effects of perceived stress on depressive symptomatology wherein the protective effects of perceived social support was demonstrated in moderate and high levels of stress, but not in low levels of stress. No significant associations were found between structural social support concepts and depressive symptomatology. The findings highlight the values of the Stress Buffering Model in social support literature in face of emerging doubts regarding this model due to limited evidence in more recent studies. Future directions and the practical implications of incorporating social network analysis from an egocentric perspective are further discussed.