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A study was conducted over a 6-wk. period to investigate factors associated with the development of depression among college students. Subjects were 134 first-semester freshmen conscripted from the general psychology subject pool. Scores were obtained from self-report questionnaires involving measures of life events, social support, and cognitive appraisal at the beginning of the semester and again later. The result of stepwise multiple regression analyses of Time 1 and Time 2 administrations indicated that the variables most strongly and consistently associated with depression were loneliness, interpersonal mistrust, and neuroticism. Two-panel cross-lagged correlational analyses indicated that loneliness preceded depression. Moreover, the data suggested that interpersonal mistrust and neuroticism were related to depression through the variable of loneliness.
Rich et al. (Sun,) studied this question.