Belonging and Wellbeing: The Role of Social Identity in Mental Health

Introduction

Being part of a group offers us a feeling of belonging and support, and this in turn has positive outcomes for mental health and well-being. We define ourselves in line with a given social identity, internalising with a specific group and viewing members of that group as a share of who we are; this is a part of our self-concept. A substantial amount of influential research has been proposed into the fact that social identity and connectedness is critical in reducing depression; however, there is a gap in investigation into the mechanisms occurring to explain why. Cruwys, South, Greenaway and Haslam (2015) suggest that this mechanism is reducing depressive attributions and have tested this theory to corroborate this.

Relationship between social identity and depression 

Previously, Cruwys et al. (2013) looked into multiple group involvement and how this affects different areas of depression and recovery. Depression was less likely to develop, and people were more likely to recover from depression if they had multiple group memberships. Furthermore, relapse rates were reduced by 24% 4 years following recovery. Moreover, Sani et al. (2012) studied soldiers and found those with a higher identification with the army had lower levels of depression. This was further supported with the same results from a study on students who strongly identify with their institution, meaning strong social connections alleviates depression. There is a plentiful supply of research demonstrating the effects of social identity on depression but a lack of research into why it works. (Cruwys, South, Greenaway & Haslam, 2015)

The idea that the relationship between social identity and depression could potentially be mediated by social support was investigated by many, for example, Jetten et al. (2014). However, it is thought that the mediator would not be only physical, but psychological, seeing as merely reflecting on our social identities brings about improvement. The investigation into whether cognitive restructuring had implications for depression came about after research into stereotypic attributions and cognitive processing had provided evidence for social identity impacting on how we understand and explain the social world.

Attribution refers to the way in which an individual justifies the cause of certain behaviours and events in life. If an individual conveys depressive attributions, they refuse credit for positive events, which are believed to only be occurring because of external influences and blame themselves for negative events, impacting many areas of their life. Depressive attribution is thought to be a major aspect of depression and there is a substantial amount of evidence to show a causal link between them. This brings about the idea that if we can alter depressive attributions, depressive symptoms should reduce as a consequence of this. Previous research into social identities structuring attributions made it appropriate to examine social identities in diminishing depression by weakening depressive attributions.

The aim of Cruwys et al (2015) was to prove this, and to do so they theorised four different aspects to examine: social identity in reducing depression, social identity and positive attribution, positive attribution and reducing depression and finally, the effect of social identity on depression being mediated by depressive attributions. The first study they conducted was on students at high risk of depression and who were under substantial acute stress due to turning in major research for their final year at university. They examined the extent of their group memberships, their depressive attribution style and their symptoms of depression and found participants with more group memberships had decreased levels of depression and depressive attributions. They also found a link between depressive attributions and symptoms of depressions and this meant they partially mediated the relationship between social identity and depression. Seeing as this study only finds a correlational link, further investigation was necessary to find a causal link.

In their second study, they manipulated social identity salience to achieve a link with greater confidence by asking participants to reflect on the groups they belong in (either no group, one group or three groups). Participants in the one/three group conditions wrote about social identity and why their group(s) is important to them, whereas participants in the no group condition didn’t complete a written task. They then used the failure paradigm in which participants are given four unsolvable questions to answer. Following this, they tested for the current mood of participants, their history of depression, their attribution style and how they viewed themselves in their group. From this, they found that the manipulation reduced negative mood and depressive attributions, that depressive attribution style was a predictor for negative mood and that this mediated the protective properties of social identity salience completely. Social identity promotes a more constructive attribution style and improves mental wellbeing, proven in this study. Moreover, they found that whether someone has experienced depression in the past or not had no influence on the effect of social identity on depressive attributions, so these effects occur irrespective of this.

Social identity has now been proven by recent studies, as explained above, to restructure the way people consider the world and the way people interpret failure, therefore reducing depression. This has important real-world implications as we now know we can change attribution styles through not only clinical, but social resources, which is also less expensive and time consuming than psychotherapies. With this knowledge, it is understood that we may have more success in alleviating symptoms of depression if we focus our attention on making strong social connections. This can assist universities in helping students, especially now with the current pandemic.

Conclusion

The University of Manchester could use this knowledge to support students by, firstly, making societies well-advertised and easily accessible encouraging students to engage in group behaviour. This is especially important for first year students, where they will not have had the opportunity to get involved with the society fairs this year to learn about potential groups they can join. The research discussed demonstrated that there was no substantial difference of the effect on depression whether they had one or more group memberships, therefore encouraging students to join one group would be extremely beneficial. With Covid-19 preventing students from physically engaging with each other, virtual events could be organised to keep individuals involved with their group identity, and this subsequently gives the opportunity for them to come together and plan these events as a team. Furthermore, the university could encourage the use of zoom and other social media to ensure the students remain connected. In a time like this, students easily struggle with mental health and depression due to feelings of isolation through lack of physical social contact. Using this research, the university can put measures in place to increase group memberships, reducing depressive attributions and thereby reducing depressive symptoms and depression, protecting their students.

References

1. Cruwys, T., South, E., Greenaway, K., & Haslam, S. (2015). Social Identity Reduces Depression by Fostering Positive Attributions. Social Psychological And Personality Science, 6(1), 65-74. doi: 10.1177/1948550614543309