Guang'an Vocational and Technical College, Guang'an 638000, China.
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Joštova 218, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Aug 30;18(17):9124. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18179124.
Many previous studies have indicated that urban adolescents show a higher level of mental health in China compared to rural adolescents. Specifically, girls in rural areas represented a high-risk group prior to the 21st century, demonstrating more suicidal behaviour and ideation than those in the urban areas because of the severe gender inequality in rural China. However, because of the urbanisation process and centralised policy to eliminate gender inequality in recent decades, the regional and gender differences in mental health might decrease. This research aimed to probe the gender and regional differences in depressive traits among adolescent students currently in China. We adopted the national survey dataset Chinese Family Panel Studies (CFPS) conducted in 2018. Accordingly, 2173 observations from 10-15-year-old subjects were included. CFPS utilised an eight-item questionnaire to screen individuals' depressive traits. Two dimensions of depressive traits were confirmed by CFA, namely depressed affect and anhedonia. The measurement invariance tests suggested that the two-factor model was applicable for both males and females and rural and urban students. Based on the extracted values from the CFA model, MANOVA results revealed that, compared to boys, girls experienced more depressed affect. Moreover, rural students demonstrated more anhedonia symptoms. There was no interaction between gender and region. The results suggest that, even though the gender and regional differences are small, being a female and coming from a rural area are still potential risk factors for developing depressive traits among adolescent students in China.
许多先前的研究表明，与农村青少年相比，城市青少年在中国的心理健康水平更高。具体来说，在 21 世纪之前，农村地区的女孩是一个高风险群体，由于中国农村地区严重的性别不平等，她们表现出比城市地区更多的自杀行为和自杀意念。然而，由于城市化进程和近几十年来消除性别不平等的集中政策，心理健康方面的地区和性别差异可能会减少。本研究旨在探讨当前中国青少年学生抑郁特征的性别和地区差异。我们采用了 2018 年进行的全国调查数据集中国家庭追踪调查（CFPS）。因此，纳入了 10-15 岁受试者的 2173 个观察值。CFPS 使用一个包含 8 个项目的问卷来筛选个体的抑郁特征。通过 CFA 确定了抑郁特征的两个维度，即抑郁情绪和快感缺失。测量不变性检验表明，两因素模型适用于男性和女性以及农村和城市学生。基于 CFA 模型提取的值，MANOVA 结果表明，与男孩相比，女孩经历了更多的抑郁情绪。此外，农村学生表现出更多的快感缺失症状。性别和地区之间没有交互作用。研究结果表明，尽管性别和地区差异很小，但作为女性和来自农村地区仍然是中国青少年学生发展抑郁特征的潜在风险因素。
