Association between attitudes toward the COVID-19 vaccines and mental health among 140,259 college students in China.

BACKGROUND

With the launch of the COVID-19 vaccines, the vaccination rate has become a hot issue of concern. However, the evidence for the relationship between college students' attitudes toward vaccines and anxiety and depressive symptoms has been limited.

METHODS

In total, 140,259 college students were recruited using a cluster sampling method in Zhengzhou, Xinxiang, Xinyang city of Henan Province, China, May 21-27, 2021. Anxiety symptoms were determined by the Generalized Anxiety Disorder tool (GAD-7) and depressive symptoms were determined by the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9). Multiple logistic regression was performed to estimate the association between students' attitudes toward the vaccines and anxiety and depressive symptoms.

RESULTS

The results indicate that 22.45% of students are unclear whether the vaccine can protect them from infection and 45.57% are unclear whether the vaccine is safe and has no side effects. In addition, after adjusting, the model showed that students who think vaccines can protect them and are safe had 0.128 (95%CI 0.110-0.150; P < 0.001) times lower risk of anxiety compared to their counterparts who think vaccines can neither protect them nor are safe. Similar ORs were found in depression (aOR = 0.157; 95%CI 0.137-0.180).

CONCLUSION

This large-scale study has shown an association between symptoms of anxiety and depression and reluctance to obtain vaccination.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10389-023-01830-7.