Assessing Depression among Students in Malaysia

Context: The main goal of this study is to assess depression symptoms and resilience among students inMalaysia. This study administered The Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-II) and Resilience Scale 14(RS-14) to 560 students from five secondary schools. Descriptive statistics were employed to calibrate thesymptoms of depression according to their severity. Meanwhile, independent sample t-tests and one-wayANOVA were employed to examine differences in gender, school locations and ethnicity on depression.Pearson correlation was used to examine the relationship between resilience and depression among students.Results showed that feeling guilty was the most severe depression symptoms followed by self-accusationand punishment. In contrast, weight loss and suicidal ideation were the two least endorsed symptoms ofdepression by the students. The study reported significant differences in the mean score of depressionbetween gender and no significant difference in the depression scores in terms of locations and ethnicity.The results also reported a low negative correlation between depression and resilience (r =-.219). Symptomsof guilt, self-accusation and punishment are common among depressed students who had lower resilience.