Abstract: Depression has been associated with altered perceived stress level, emotional expression, and immunological response. Prior researches have investigated and found that test tube white blood cells of animals are associated with stress and depression. However, there were lacking evidences on the association of depression of white blood cells, perceived stress, and emotional expression on human samples. This study has investigated the link among these variables and applying a causal modeling technique in establishing an indirect causal relationship among variables. From the result, 32 assessed depressed college students in Quezon City completed measures of depression, perceived stress, and emotional expression, while Monocyte count was consecutively extracted from the assessed depressed patients. The study yielded an interesting result explaining that depression can be predicted by stress, while monocyte counts can be altered by stress but not specifically by depression. Emotional expression, however, is not found to be related to depression, stress, or monocyte counts. It is also proven that stress indirectly aggravate depression level. An exciting result has also been obtained from the study wherein human monocyte samples from depressed patients are directly related and are indirectly increased by their perception of stress. Both partial correlation and path analysis suggest that stress plays an important role in the influence of depression to the monocyte proliferation. The result is also suggesting further research in terms of the time of the onset of depression-whether longer exposure to depression will alter the depression level of an affected suffer. Nevertheless, the results support a biopsychosocial approach in the treatment of depression and add to the existing knowledge that mere perception of stress aggravates levels of depression and would later have a negative effect to one’s immunity.
Keywords: (ABS) College Graduates, Perceived stress, Depression, Monocyte count, Emotional Expression.
Title: The Varying Influences of Perceived Stress and Depression among Selected College Students
Author: Jan Patrick G. Gutierrez
International Journal of Healthcare Sciences
ISSN 2348-5728 (Online)
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