Association between lifestyle factors and depressive symptoms among Chinese middle school students: a cross-sectional study

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to identify the independent contributions of lifestyle factors to depressive symptoms among Chinese middle school students, with a focus on gender differences. A cross-sectional study of 3081 middle school students was conducted in Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province, China. Students were asked to complete a questionnaire including socio-demographics, lifestyle factors, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and the Chinese Secondary School Students Depression Scale. The total prevalence of depressive symptoms was 19.9%. Poor quality of sleep, smoking, drinking and longer mobile phone use time were related to increased prevalence of depressive symptoms after adjusting for potential confounders. A significant interaction between gender and quality of sleep on the depressive symptoms was found (P = 0.014). The gender-stratified analysis showed that quality of sleep was significantly associated with depressive symptoms in both genders. However, the effect in males was greater than that in females.

KEYWORDS:

• Depressive symptoms
• middle school students
• lifestyles
• gender differences

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to investigators and each school leaders, teachers and students for their support to the data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by grants from Health and Family Planning Commission of Jilin Province (Grant Number: 2017G018), and Science and Technology Department of Jilin Province, China (Grant Number: 20200101133FG).