2019 Volume 67 Issue 4 Pages 289-303
The present study examined impact of the fear of emotional over-involvement with a close friend who is depressed on evaluation of the severity and prognosis of the friend's problems, the friend's need to seek help from a student counseling service, and related factors. A scale was developed to measure fear of emotional over-involvement with depressed friends, and the scale's internal consistency and validity were examined. The results of a factor analysis revealed that the 9 items in the scale were comprised of 2 factors: fear of contagious depression and tendency to avoid confrontation. The scale had acceptable internal consistency and validity. The main results of structural equation modeling were that, regardless of participants' ability to identify depression, (a) the tendency to avoid confronting a friend's depression was positively correlated with an optimistic prognosis for the friend, and negatively correlated with the respondent's rating of the severity of the friend's depression, and (b) fear of contagious depression was correlated positively with the respondent's rating of the severity of the friend's problem. These findings suggest that university students who tend to avoid confronting depressed friends may underestimate their friends' symptoms of depression, whereas those who fear contagious depression may not underestimate them.
