Abstract:

The risk of depression among Malaysian adolescents has been on the rise in recent years. Families, as the key to preventing depression in adolescents, should pay attention to the mental health of adolescents, improve family functioning, and strengthen emotional and other aspects of support. This research explored the relationship between family emotional support and adolescent depression, focusing on strategies to enhance family emotional support, and the impact of family emotional support. This is a qualitative study where depressed adolescents from the Tzu Chi Life Care Group in Penang were selected and semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve respondents finally the interviews were coded and summarized using thematic analysis. According to research findings, enhancing family emotional support can help increase the resilience of depressed adolescents and families, thereby alleviating adolescent depression and improving mental health. The intervention of social workers through professional methods has helped families respond to the emotional needs of depressed adolescents, respect their personalities, optimize parenting styles, and increase family interactions, which has helped to increase family emotional support for depressed adolescents. Social workers served as a bridge to intervene in family services for depressed adolescents. In the future field of adolescent mental health services in Malaysia, the emphasis on the introduction of social workers and family support may be more conducive to the alleviation of adolescent depression.

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