Stress and depression are representative of the mental health problems of university students worldwide. This cross-sectional study explored the moderating effect of mindfulness on the influence of stress on depression according to the degree of life stress. The participants were 738 university students in years 2-4 in five 4-year universities in South Korea. Depression was positively correlated with stress and negatively with mindfulness at a statistically significant level. In multiple regression analysis, stress was found to have an effect by increasing depression, and mindfulness by relieving depression. In the moderated multiple regression analysis, mindfulness had a moderating effect on the impact of stress on depression only in low-stress groups, showing that the interaction of stress with mindfulness was significantly negative (β = -0.11, t = -2.52, p = 0.012) and the inclusion of this interaction significantly increased the explanatory power for depression variation (F change 6.36, p = 0.012) in the full model. In conclusion, we suggest considering stress levels in the development of mindfulness-based intervention strategies to effectively manage the depression of university students.
Keywords: depression; mindfulness; stress; university students.