Interpersonal relations, depression and psychological wellbeing of adolescents

Abstract

This study sought to investigate the relationship between interpersonal relations, depression and the psychological wellbeing of adolescents. The objectives of this study were to investigate the relationship between interpersonal relations and depression of adolescents, to investigate the relationship between depression and psychological wellbeing of adolescents and to investigate the relationship between interpersonal relations and the psychological wellbeing of adolescents. A cross sectional correlational study design was used in this study and the study was purely quantitative. A sample size of 360 adolescents was targeted but 283 adolescents participated in the study. Stratified random sampling was used to select schools and simple random sampling was used to select schools from each of the strata and to select the adolescents. Two types were statistics, which included descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages) used for adolescents’ interpersonal relationship, depression and psychological well-being and inferential statistics (Spearman correlation coefficient) used to test the relationships as stated by the hypotheses of this study. Findings revealed a significant moderate negative relationship (rho = -.453, p < .05) between adolescents’ interpersonal relationship and depression, a significant strong negative relationship (rho = -.751, p < .05) between depression and psychological wellbeing of adolescents, and a significant moderate positive relationship (rho = .402, p < .05) between interpersonal relations and the psychological wellbeing of adolescents. It was concluded that the findings of this study were similar to most of the earlier studies highlighting the role of interpersonal relations on depression and psychological well-being of adolescents as well as the role of depression on psychological well-being of adolescents. It was concluded that interpersonal relations interventions as well as depression intervention should be provided to the adolescents to improve reduce depression among them and thus improve their psychological well-being.