Influence of loneliness and the intensity depression on dysfunctional attitude among clinically depressed patients

Abstract

Depression and loneliness are two major psychological illnesses that have been studied and researched over a long period of time. The various factors that influence depression and loneliness and their variety of treatment methods have been of great concern as they’re much common among the people all over the world. Dysfunctional attitude has been considered as one among those major factors that leads to or is closely related to depression and loneliness. The aim of this study was to know the strength of relationships of dysfunctional attitudes with depression and loneliness and know the extent to which depression and loneliness predict dysfunctional attitude among depression patients. 40 depression patients were considered as the sample of the study and the scales used were Dysfunctional Attitude Scale (DAS), UCLA Loneliness Scale and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II). Pearson’s correlation and simple linear regression were used to statistically analyse the coded data to reach the conclusion that dysfunctional attitude was better correlated with loneliness than depression and that it was better predicted by loneliness over depression with an accuracy of 22%.