Subjective Well-Being as an indicator for clinical depression Student Adriana Gargiulo Supervisor A/ Professor Mark Stokes

Background Subjective Well-Being (SWB) Homeostasis Theory - Cummins (1995, 1998) SWB ( %) SM

Changing levels of SWB as homeostasis is challenged (Cummins, Lau & Davern, in press).

Clinical depression = failure of Homeostasis = loss of SWB. Rationale for this research

Hypothesis: People with clinical depression would have a SWB below the normative range 70-80% of the Scale Maximum (SM).

Methodology 146 men part of a larger study Personal Well-Being Index-Adult (PWI-A) Semi-structured Clinical Interview (SCID- I/NP)

Analysis One way Between Subjects ANOVA Psychopathology vs. PWI-A scores

Means and Standard Deviations of Subjective Well-being Between Groups Levels of the Independent Variable No Psycho- pathology Currently depressed Previously depressed Other non- depressive Psycho- pathology Number of Participants Mean Standard Deviation

Mean Effects for Psychopathology

Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) Curve analysis

Findings Support for Cummins proposition: Loss of SWB indicates Clinical depression. However, PWI-A not sufficiently specific as a diagnostic tool – PWI-A could be used as a screening tool.

Thank You