Social Cognition and Attitude Towards Depression
Abstract
The overall aim of this proposal is to investigate whether the attitudes towards depression affects the social cognition of students from Louisiana State University Alexandria (LSUA). Research has found that social cognition is important in cognitive functioning as it enables individuals with depression to identify, infer information about intentions and feelings and comprehend information. The research finds that social cognitive performance is impaired when people have stressful encounters. The background information about the proposal is that both traditional and non-traditional students experience mental health problems as they join the university. Traditional students encounter various challenges such as social problems, homesickness, time management, adjusting to the new environment and school-life balance. Similar, non-traditional students suffer from school-life balance, financial challenges, family responsibilities, and time management. The research has also found that among these students, some may be suffering from remitted depression while others may be suffering from current depression. Patients' whose cognitive functioning has been affected have problems in paying attention, negative attitude and memory loss. The main problem that the research has found is that despite the fact that some patients have remitted depression while others have current depression, there is no difference between the two individuals in measuring social cognition. For this reason, Lip service is only given to patients who engage in university activities such as social life pressure, extracurricular activities, relationships and more. The research on social cognition and depression has been ignored especially on areas based on types of medications, gender, and other factors. It is important to examine the social cognition and attitude towards depression since there are many factors that may contribute to low performance in social cognition. The hypothesis of the study is that attitudes towards depression are linked with low social cognition among LSUA students. To accomplish this hypothesis, the study will use 50 participants from LSUA students' community where twenty-five are male and 25 are female.
Social cognition can be defined as one’s ability to detect, process, and comprehend information that is of social importance. The information can be about a place, a situation, or a person and its relevance to the individual (Baune, Air, & Weightman, 2014). Social cognition is an important element for personal functioning, wellbeing, and development. Depression is a mental state that negatively affects the way one feels about oneself. For college and university going students, college life can be stressful at time. From adjusting to the new environment, academic pressure, and fulfillment of personal tasks, some students have stressful encounters during their college time. The encounters lead to a student’s first mental health problems and eventual downfall if not countered (Pedreli et al., 2015). It is these encounters that lead to depression and cause a student to have low performance in social cognition. Baune, Air, and Weightman (2014) researched on social cognition and depression as a review on the role of the latter in major depressive disorder. Ladegaard (2013) investigated major depression and social cognitive ability. Villate, Marcotte, and Potvin (2017) examined the correlates of depression in college students.
Mental health problems are common among university students. This can be attributed to university life being a challenging time to both traditional and non-traditional undergraduate students. Depending on one’s financial support, the traditional student may join university after clearing high school studies. Traditional students are usually young, require a parent’s financial support, may have part-time work, and don’t have the experience to handle the root harsh nature that life is. Coupled with academic pressure, taking up adult-like duties, being in relationships, and interacting with different people from different backgrounds, the life of a university student may be stressful. Non-traditional students may also have mental health problems due to chances of having dependents that do not include their spouses. They may have to make time for work, meeting deadlines, family responsibilities, and meeting the demands for academics (Pedreli et al., 2015). This continuous loop of life has caused an increase in the number of students, both traditional and non-traditional, having mental health problems. These numbers include the students who may have suffered from depression and have recovered- remitted patients, and students who are currently suffering from depression-current patients.
The connection of social cognition and the attitude towards depression is abstruse. Patients who suffer from depression have been reported to impairments in cognitive functioning. These functions include paying attention, loss of memory, and psychomotor functioning (Douglas & Porter, 2009). Harkness et al., (2011) and McDermott and Elbeimer (2009) found out that depressed individuals show extensively reduced social cognition when paralleled to healthy control individuals. Also, depressed people are more likely to have negative attitudes and interpretations to neutral expressions when compared to healthy control individuals. The have a grander passion of emotion than the healthy control group (Harkness, et al., 2011). Nevertheless, there is no difference between healthy control individuals and depressed (current and remitted) individuals on measures of social cognition, visual perception, prosodic stimulant, and affect recognition. This lack of link could be due to the connection between social cognition and individual cognitive processes not being expansively studied.
A majority of the study showing the relationship between social cognition and the attitude towards depression have been concentrated in patients who are beyond teenage hood and early youth. Lip service has been given to the executive function and information processing of depressed individuals who are participating in activities that university students do. These activities include enduring academic pressure, social life pressure, engagements in sports and co-curricular activities, part-time works, and or, relationships. This void in the study has left a disparity in findings go from research on social cognition and depression in university. Also, gender, symptoms severity, types of medication, and recurrence of depressive episodes have been used as variables in most of the studies, ignoring individual factors that may lead to depression and eventual low performance in social cognition of individuals. There is need for study of social cognition and attitude towards depression, their association and prevalence in university students, such as the LSUA. These voids have created an avenue for this research to center on social cognition attitude towards depression in LSUA. This paper will investigate whether the attitude towards depression affects social cognition of LSUA students. With this goal in mind, the investigation will aim to address two hypothesis.
- Attitude towards Depression is linked with low social cognition among LSUA students.
- Social cognition performance is affected by current and remitted depression.
Participants
A total of 50 participants are expected to take part in the study. The participants will be recruited from the LSUA student community. This project will be conducted via online survey. Of the 50 patients, the researcher will expect 30 to know an individual with remitted depression patients and 20 to know an individual with current depression patients. Twenty-five patients will be male and 25 will be female. The 50 patients will be compared to an equal number of people who know healthy control individuals. The healthy control individuals will be the selected by the researcher through individual interviews. The researcher will get participants of ages 17 to 56. The researcher will not factor in the race as a variable in recruiting patients for the study or the healthy control individuals. The type of students, whether traditional or non-traditional will be factored in when selecting the patients. The course studied, extracurricular activities engaged in, and use of substances will be factors when recruiting the patients for the research.
Materials and Measures.
In an effort to reveal the relationship between social cognition and attitude towards depression in LSUA students, factors such as age, gender, family dynamics, course studied, part-time or fulltime student etc. will be addressed. Attitudes toward symptoms of depression, sociodemographic factors, friends’ support, adjustment to college, and existence of a romantic relationship will be used to consider eligibility. In this study, we will stay away from measuring diagnosis and only measure attitudes about diagnosis. In addition, we will create our own survey measuring attitudes towards depression. Some example questions assessing attitudes about depression could be: Do you think that Depression should be considered a real disorder? Do you think that individuals with depression should be given special accommodations? These types of questions can allow you to determine if people have a negative view of depression or a sympathetic view of depression. All these tests will be made into a flowing questionnaire that the patients will respond to.
Procedures
The researcher will go to the professor and once the survey is approved, the professor will upload it to Survey monkey. Once approved, the professor will then distribute the link to LSUA students for participation. Survey monkey will provide the avenue for the online questionnaire. The 50 participants will get wind of the research through emails and participation is voluntary. Special effort will be put by the professor to get the information to majority of the students in the university. The researcher will introduce the project to the recruited participants and healthy control group through survey monkey. Ethical issues will be addressed and the recruited patients will be given resources for depression as whether it is severe, current, remitted. This will aid in not losing sight of the scope and aim of the study. Through the survey monkey questionnaire we will be able to provide answers to the whether or not an individual’s attitude towards depression is linked with low social cognition among LSUA students. In addition, the survey will answer if social cognition’s performance is affected by attitudes about current and remitted depression.
References
Air, T., Weightman, M., & Baune, B. (2015). Symptom severity of depressive symptoms impacts on social cognition performance in current but not remitted major depressive disorder. Frontiers in Psychology.
Baune, B., Air, T., & Weightman, M. (2014). A review of the role of social cognition in major depressive disorder. Front Psychiatry.
Douglas, K., & Porter, R. (2009). Longitudinal assessment of neuropsychological function in major depression. Aust. N. Z. J. Psychiatry, 1105-1117.
Harkness, K., Wasburn, D., Theriault, J., Lee, L., & Sabbagh, M. (2011). Maternal history of depression is associated with enhanced theory of mind in depressed and nondepressed adult women. Psychiatry Res, 91-96.
Ladegaard, N. (2013). Social Cognition in Depression. Risskov: Aarhus University.
McDermott, L., & Elbeimer, K. (2009). A meta-analysis of depression severity and cognitive function. . Disord, 1-8.
Pearson, N. (2009). Advanced Clinical Solutions for WAIS-IV and WMS-IV: Administrationand scoring manual. The Psychological Corporation.
Pedreli, P., Nyer, M., Yeung, A., Zulauf, C., & Wilens, T. (2015). Collegde Students: Mental Health Problems and Treatment Considerations. Acad Psychiatry, 503-511.
Villate, A., Marcotte, D., & Potvin, A. (2017). Correlates of Depression in First Year College Students. Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 114-136.
