The Mediating role of Shame and Self-Criticism in the relationship between Attachment Styles and Severity of Depressive Symptoms

Objectives: Depression is the fourth major cause of disease burden in the world, which alone accounts for the largest share of non-fatal disease burden. The present study was aims to investigate the mediating role of shame and self-criticism in the relationship between attachment styles and severity of depression symptoms. Methods: The current research design was descriptive and the structural equation modeling. The statistical population of the current study was all people with the age range of 18 to 47 years in Tehran in 2022. The research sample consisted of 212 people who were selected using the availabe  sampling method. In order to collect data, Beck's Depression Questionnaire, Hazen and Shaver's Attachment Styles Questionnaire, Tangeni et al.'s Shame Questionnaire, and Thompson and Zaroff's Critical Levels Questionnaire were used. For the statistical analysis of the data, structural equation modeling with using Lisrel 8/8 software was used. Results: The results of data analysis showed a relationship between anxious-avoidant attachment styles (r=0.62; p<0.01) and anxious-ambivalent (r=0.51; p<0.01) and the severity of depression symptoms, shame and the severity of depression (r=0.75; p<0.01), self-criticism and the severity of depression (r=0.45; p<0.01) was a positive and meaningful. Also, the anxious-avoidant insecure attachment path and the anxious-ambivalent insecure attachment path are significant to the severity of depression symptoms with the mediation of shame, respectively, with standard coefficients of 0.30 and 0.33 at the p<0.05 level. In addition, the anxious-avoidant insecure attachment path and the anxious-ambivalent insecure attachment path are significant to the severity of depression symptoms with the mediation of self-criticism, respectively, with standard coefficients of 0.22 and 0.33 at the p<0.05 level. Conclusion: According to the results of the present study, anxious-avoidant and ambivalent insecure attachment, shame and self-criticism are the underlying factors of depression, and paying attention to the mentioned variables helps researchers and therapists in prevention and designing more appropriate treatments.