Psychometric properties of three measures of protective factors for depression and suicidal behaviour among adolescents.

OBJECTIVES: To assess the reliability of French versions of the Adolescent Coping Scale (ACS), the Reasons for Living Inventory for Adolescents (RFL-A), and the Spirituality Scale (SS); to examine the construct validity of these psychometric instruments; and to determine their convergent validity with French versions of the Life Events Questionnaire for Adolescents (LEQ-A), the Beck Depression Inventory-Second Edition (BDI-II), and the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS) among French-Canadian adolescents. METHODS: Participants were 429 adolescents from high schools (n = 283) and the Mood Disorder Clinic (n = 146) in Montreal. The instruments were translated into French following the back-translation method. The internal consistency was assessed through Cronbach alpha coefficients. Exploratory analyses were conducted to document the content of their dimensions. Convergent validity was examined by correlating the ACS, the RFL-A, and the SS with the French versions of the LEQ-A, the BDI-II, and the BHS. RESULTS: The findings confirm that the ACS, RFL-A, and SS are psychometric instruments well suited to assess protective factors for depression and suicidal behaviour among French-speaking adolescents in community and clinical settings. However, results must be interpreted with some circumspection as 2 SS subscales obtained reliability coefficients in the moderate range only and the instructions for the RFL-A were reframed in response to ethical considerations. CONCLUSIONS: Our results add to those already available on the original English versions of the ACS, RFL-A, and SS and advance the knowledge of the psychometric properties of protective measures.

Protective factors against depression and suicidal behaviour in adolescence.

OBJECTIVES: To examine whether protective factors in the Protection for Adolescent Depression Study (PADS) moderate the impact of stressful events on depression and suicidal behaviour in the community and a clinical setting; and to study the influence of sex. METHOD: Participants were 283 adolescents from the community and 119 from a mood disorder clinic in Montreal. The participants were evaluated on 6 instruments measuring individual risk and protective factors. Descriptive analyses and univariate and multiple logistic regression models were carried out. RESULTS: Risk factors predicted higher levels of depression and presence of suicidal behaviour, and protective factors predicted lower levels of depression and absence of suicidal behaviour, as expected under the vulnerability-resilience stress model. Several sex differences were observed in terms of the predictive power of risk factors (for example, hopelessness among girls and keep to themselves among boys) and protective factors (for example, focusing on the positive among girls and self-discovery among boys). CONCLUSIONS: Findings from the PADS suggest that protective factors moderate the impact of stress on depression and suicidal behaviour. Developing protection appears important in the presence of chronic conditions, such as depressive disorders, to reduce the likelihood of further episodes. The influence of sex makes it all the more relevant to target different factors for boys and girls to increase protection and decrease risk in prevention and intervention programs.