Depression is a complex psychological construct, interpreted by a large number of factors. The likelihood of experiencing depressive symptoms is twice as high for women. Gender differences in depression begin in late adolescence, when there is an increase in depression in both genders. Such findings were confirmed in this study on a sample of high school students (N = 335) in which depressive symptoms were measured by the Depression Scale for Children and Adolescents (Vulic-Prtoric, 2003). Depression in the presented sample sought to be explained by a hierarchical model, combining a unique contribution to the variables of adolescents’ age, gender, parenting style, and perfectionism. The model thus assumed was able to account for a total of 43% of the variance in depression in the selected sample. The authoritative parenting style has been consistently linked to the psychological well-being of children, while the authoritarian style has been linked to a number of internalized issues such as depression. This explains the significant and high correlations between scores on the Perception of parental behavior scale (Macuka, 2008) with depression, but also with measures of perfectionism in the adolescent sample. Perfectionism is defined in terms of setting high standards, with overly critical selfevaluations. In adolescence, performance is emphasized, which, combined with many other changes, makes an individual vulnerable to the development of depression, as indicated by the correlation between scores on the Multidimensional Perfection Scale (MPS-F) and depression.

adolescence, depression, perfectionism, parenting