The relationship between social support and depressive symptoms among the college students of Liaoning, China: a moderated mediated analysis

This study aims to investigate a moderated mediation model in the relationship between social support and depressive symptoms. A cross-sectional survey was conducted from September to November 2017 in Liaoning Province, China. 1400 college students from Jinzhou Medical University, Liaoning University of Technology and Bohai University were investigated by stratified random cluster sampling method. The questionnaire included the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), the Internet Addiction Impairment Index (IAII), the Chinese version of the Social Support Rating Scale (SSRS), the simplified version of Connor-Davidson resilience scale (CD-RISC10) . SPSS21.0 and AMOS21.0 were used to analyze the data. In total, 1362 anonymous questionnaires were considered valid (97.3% effective response rate). Pearson correlation analysis results showed: CES-D was significantly (P < 0.01) and positively correlated with IAII(r = 0.640); CES-D was negatively correlated with SRSS (r = -0.364) and CD-RISC (r = -0.393); The mediating effect results showed that internet addiction partially mediated the association between social support and depressive symptoms (64.9% proportion mediated). In addition, the mediating effect of internet addiction was established under the high psychological resilience level 95% CI (LLCI: -0.451, ULCI: -0.154), but was not established under the low psychological resilience level 95% CI(LLCI: -0.271, ULCI: 0.065). Therefore,there was a moderated mediation effect.