Review of the relationship between the college students attitudes towards love and depression levels

This study aims to review the relation between college students’ love attitudes and depression levels. Subjects selected were 125 male and 275 female bachelor’s and master’s degree students; a total of 400 students from various universities in Istanbul in academic year 2013-2014. Data for this study were collected employing both the Love Attitudes Scale (short form) developed by Hendrick et al. based on the love styles classification by Lee, and the Beck Depression Inventory developed by Beck et al. Review of the findings obtained from this study reveals as follows; there are meaningful statistically inverse correlations between the students’ depression scores and passionate love attitudes, and meaningful statistically linear correlations between their playful love attitudes and possessive love. No meaningful correlations were found between their other love attitudes and depression level. The findings obtained were discussed with reference to relevant literature and the other studies conducted on this subject, and various suggestions were made under the frame of the findings. Key words: Love, love attitudes, depression, young adult.