Resilience, Life Satisfaction, And Optimism as Protective Factors Against Depressive Symptoms Among Adolescents During The COVID-19 Pandemic

This study aimed to analyze the resilience and life satisfaction factors that predicted and protected adolescents from depressive symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 278 adolescents aged between 14 and 17 years completed the Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI-20), the Resiliency Scale for Children and Adolescents (RSCA), and the Multidimensional Life Satisfaction Scale for Adolescents (MLSSA) at two-time points during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020 and 2021). A LASSO regression was carried out to test the main predictors that could protect against depressive symptoms, and posteriorly, a mixed-effects generalized linear model was calculated to identify the significance of the results. The results indicated that the main predictors selected that protected against depressive symptoms were family, self, compared self, and self-efficacy from the MLSSA, as well as optimism, trust, sensitivity, and impairment from the RSCA. Statistical significance was only found for optimism (OR=.63, p<.05). Accordingly, it was concluded that factors of resilience and life satisfaction could have protected against depressive symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic, and interventions focused on strengthening these factors could be implemented to minimize adverse mental health outcomes, such as depressive symptoms.