Associations between hopelessness, negative thinking styles, and depression in Chinese adolescents: a large-sample...

Drawing on Self-Determination Theory and the Hopelessness Theory of Depression, this study reconceptualized hopelessness along the dimensions of three basic psychological needs and meaningfulness, broadened negative thinking styles to include rumination and irrational beliefs, and systematically examined their associations with depressive symptoms in Chinese adolescent students.

We analyzed 17,561 students and assessed hopelessness and negative thinking styles through self-developed questionnaires, the reliability and validity of which have been verified. Depression was measured using the Children's Depression Inventory and the Depression Self-Rating Scale for Children. Both variable-centered and subgroup analysis strategies were used to examine the relationships between variables.

(1) Variable-centered analysis showed that, after controlling for demographic variables (including gender, grade, and family socioeconomic status), hopelessness and negative thinking styles explained 50% of depression variance, with explanatory power increasing with educational level; (2) Subgroup analysis revealed that 64.01% of depressed students exhibited at least one risk factor among hopelessness or negative thinking styles, but only 15.06% of non-depressed students. The depression detection rate was 66.77% among students with ≥ 1 risk factor, versus 1.44% among those with none.

Adolescent depression is strongly associated with hopelessness toward basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, relatedness, and meaningfulness) and negative thinking styles.