earticle

영어

The purpose of this study is to verify the mediation effect of alexithymia in the relationship between female college students’ guilt and depression. 215 on and offline surveys were distributed to female college students who are attending three-and four-year universities in South Korea. The data were analyzed to examine Pearson’s correlation and mediation effect of alexithymia using SPSS and SPSS PROCESS macro methods. The results were as follows: First, the correlation analysis confirmed that guilt was significantly related to depression and alexithymia of female college students. Furthermore, difficulties in identifying feeling and difficulties in describing feeling, sub-factors of alexithymia, were related to depression. Second, as a result of verifying the effects of mediation, the study demonstrated that the mediation effects of difficulties in identifying feeling and difficulties in describing feeling were significant. However, the externally oriented thinking, a sub-factor of alexithymia, had no mediation effect. These results highlighted the importance of interventions for difficulties in identifying feeling and difficulties in describing feeling in female college students’ depression.