Social support helps protects against depressed mood in adolescence

The goals of the current study were to identify different trajectories of sadness from Grade 6 to 9 in Australian school students, and to explore the role that social support from school, teachers, friends and families play in supporting students’ mental health.

Investigators

Tess Gregory

Project description

Previous studies have shown that sadness tends to increase from childhood to adolescence, particularly in girls. However, there is also a lot of variation with some girls showing stable levels of sadness over time, and others showing decreases in sadness as they move into adolescence. The goals of the current study were to identify different trajectories of sadness from Grade 6 to 9 in Australian school students, and to explore the role that social support from school, teachers, friends and families play in supporting students’ mental health. This project formed the Master of Clinical Psychology Research component for Ms Danica Gregory, with supervision by Dr Tess Gregory and Professor Deborah Turnbull.

This project was undertaken when Institute researchers (Tess Gregory) formed part of the Fraser Mustard Centre, a previous collaboration between researchers at The Kids Research Institute Australia and policy makers at the South Australian Department for Education, aimed to improve research translation.

External collaborators

Danica Gregory (University of Adelaide), Deborah Turnbull (University of Adelaide), Jana Bednarz (University of Adelaide)