Attitudes of the adolescents towards mourning were compared in terms of their genders and levels of depression

Abstract

In this study, attitudes of the adolescents who lost a next-of-kins (mother, father, sibling, uncle, aunt, grandmother, grandfather, etc.) in the recent year towards mourning were compared in terms of their genders and levels of depression. The study was carried out on 100 secondary school students of eight and ninth grades who are studying at the center of Samsun. The Scale of Attitude towards Mourning developed by Balcı Çelik (2008) and The Scale of Depression for Children (SDC) developed by Öy (1991) were used in this study. Accoriding to the findings gathered out of the study, it was found out that the difference between levels of adolescents‘ attitudes towards mourning in terms of their genders is significant, and girls mourn more intensely. The relationship between depression and the attitudes towards mourning was found to be r= .62 (p< .001) in the positive direction. Furthermore, they also found that there is a significant difference between the students who lost a next-of-kins and the students who just lost someone, and the one
who lost a next-of-kins mourn more intensely.