TY  - EJOU
AU  - Huang, Ziqin 
AU  - Tang, Xinfeng 
AU  - Zhu, Yuchen 
AU  - Wang, Yina 
AU  - Hou, Liqi 

TI  - Association between Negative Life Events and Depressive Symptoms among Chinese Adolescents in Secondary Vocational Schools: The Role of Automatic Thoughts and Social Connectedness
T2  - International Journal of Mental Health Promotion

PY  - 
VL  - 
IS  - 
SN  - 2049-8543

AB  - <b>Background:</b> Negative life events (NLEs) are closely related to adolescent depression, yet less is known about how cognitive and interpersonal processes jointly account for this link among students in secondary vocational schools. This study tested whether automatic thoughts explained the association between NLEs and depressive symptoms and whether social connectedness altered this pathway. <b>Methods:</b> A questionnaire survey was administered to 664 adolescents from a vocational school in China. The participants were 15 to 19 years old (48.3% female, mean age = 16.39; SD = 0.96). Analyses were performed in SPSS 26.0 with the PROCESS macro. Model 4 estimated the indirect pathway from NLEs to depressive symptoms through automatic thoughts, whereas Model 59 examined whether social connectedness moderated the direct and indirect paths. <b>Results:</b> NLEs were positively associated with depressive symptoms and automatic thoughts, while social connectedness showed negative correlations with these variables. NLEs positively predicted depressive symptoms (B = 0.495, <i>p</i> &lt; 0.001) and automatic thoughts (B = 0.646, <i>p</i> &lt; 0.001). Automatic thoughts also predicted depressive symptoms (B = 0.766, <i>p</i> &lt; 0.001), and the indirect effect through automatic thoughts was significant (effect = 0.495, 95% CI [0.409, 0.589]). Social connectedness moderated the NLEs–automatic thoughts path (B = −0.092, <i>p</i> &lt; 0.001), with weaker effects at high social connectedness (B = 0.370, <i>p</i> &lt; 0.001) than at low social connectedness (B = 0.553, <i>p</i> &lt; 0.001). Conditional indirect effects were smaller at high social connectedness (effect = 0.223, 95% CI [0.130, 0.335]) than at low social connectedness (effect = 0.382, 95% CI [0.298, 0.476]). <b>Conclusions:</b> These findings suggest that automatic thoughts and social connectedness are important cognitive and interpersonal targets for understanding depressive symptoms in adolescents exposed to NLEs. Interventions for vocational school students may benefit from reducing maladaptive automatic thoughts while strengthening perceived social connection.
KW  - Negative life events; depressive symptoms; automatic thoughts; social connectedness; adolescents

DO  - 10.32604/ijmhp.2026.084973