RESUMO
Objective To investigate the relationship among stressful life events ,social support and depression through researc‐hing a large number of Chinese army men ,then discovered the social psychological mechanism of the depression .Methods 11 ,400 officers and soldiers were tested with three scales ,the center for epidemiologic studies depression scale ,life events scale and social support scale .The differences between groups were determined with the variance ,SPSS 18 .0 software and AMOS7 .0 were used to analyse and build model .In addition ,we built the path model of life events and social support on depression with AMOS 7 .0 soft‐ware .Results (1)There is a significant positive correlation between Chinese soldiers depression levels and life events (r=0 .382 , P<0 .01) .(2) There is a significant negative correlation between Chinese soldiers depression levels and the social support (r= -0 .379 ,P<0 .01) .(3) It was established the path model of life events ,the social support and depressive symptom level .Con‐clusion Depressive symptom is related to the military life events ,which may predict the occurrence of the depression .Moreover ,so‐cial support ,a protective factor for mental health ,can relieve the depression of officers and men .