The Relationship Among the Degrees of Life Stress, Social Support and Depression in Postpartal Women

Choi, Soon Hee

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between life stress and depression, and the effect of social support in postpartal 4~6 week women. Theoretically social support is thought to mediate the relationship between life stress and depression. Data were collected from June 1 to July 30, 1999. The data were analysed by use of SPSS. Two hypotheses were tested using Gamma, a measure of association for ordinal variables. Partial gamma was used to test the third hypothesis. Patterns of elaboration described by Babbie(1986) were selected to interpret the relationship of the three variables in the analyses. The results of this study are summarized as follows; 1. There was a positive relationship between life stress and depression (Gamma=0.45, P=0.017), and an inverse relationship between social support and depression (Gamma=-0.49, P=0.009). Thus the first, two hypotheses were supported. 2. When social support was controlled, the relationship between life stress and depression increased under the condition of low social support, but with high social support, the relationship decreased. It can be interpreted that life stresses are positively related to depression under the condition of low social support, however this relationship cannot be expected with high social support.