Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #111731

Deborah F. Van Marter, MPH¹, Deborah A. Levesque, PhD¹, Janice M. Prochaska, PhD¹, and James O. Prochaska, PhD². (1) Pro-Change Behavior Systems, PO Box 755, West Kingston, RI 02892, 401-874-4915, dvanmarter@prochange.com, (2) University of Rhode Island, 2 Chafee Road, Kingston, RI 02881

Depression among college students has been associated with increased alcohol use, school attrition and suicide. As the first step in the development of a population-based intervention, Transtheoretical model (TTM) measures were developed to assess college students' readiness to use a range of healthy strategies to prevent and reduce depression. The sample included 298 students at a large state university (mean age=20, 69% female, and 86% white) who were experiencing symptoms of depression or had one or more risk factors (e.g., prior history of depression). Surprisingly, 67% of these students reported being in the Action or Maintenance stage for depression prevention. To examine different subtypes of students in the Action and Maintenance stages, cluster analysis was used to classify students into a small number of homogeneous subgroups based on their standardized scores on the TTM pros, cons, and confidence measures. Five profiles emerged from the analysis: Most Protected, Most Negative, Least Confident, Ambivalent and Least Positive. These clusters differed significantly on level of depression (F(4, 168)=3.68, p<.01, eta square=.081), their use of TTM processes of change (approximate F(44, 595)=2.03, p<.001, eta square=.125), and total number of strategies used to prevent and reduce depression (F(4, 170)=2.79, p<.05, eta square=.061). Results suggest that even students in the Action or Maintenance stages for depression prevention are in need of intervention. Furthermore, students in these stages may benefit from interventions tailored to their profiles.

Learning Objectives:

• List three risk factors for depression as defined in this study.
• Discuss the relationship between risk profiles and stage of change for depression prevention.
• Recognize the importance of tailoring depression prevention interventions to risk profiles.

Keywords: Depression, Prevention

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.