Depression: a study on perceived factors of depression among university students in northern area / Nurul Hidayah Kamaruzaman and Nurdiana Zainal Abidin

The study is mainly focus on the perceived factors of depression among university students in northern area. This research aims to identify the perceived factors of depression among university students. The research proposal consists of five chapter which are introduction, literature review and conceptual framework, research method, finding and analysis, and the last chapter is discussion and conclusion. Depression is a serious medical illness that effected the feelings such as sadness and loss of interest in activities also develop negative thinking in the person who suffered from depression. The study is conducted at Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) in Sintok, Kedah. The population number in UUM is about 30,670 and the sample size for this study is 380 as proposed by Krejcie & Morgan (1970). The simple random sampling has been used in this study where all the university students in UUM have the same chance of being selected as a respondent for this study. This study used the components in Beck’s cognitive theory of depression which are negative cognitive triad, negative self-schemas and dysfunctional belief as the variables to determine the perceived level of depression among university students. The data analysis has been conduct using Descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation and Multiple regression. From the data analysis, it shows that negative cognitive triad is the most influential perceived factors of depression among university students. The components in Beck cognitive theory of depression has been further discuss by referring to others previous study on the area of depression.