Depression in Chinese adolescents from 1989 to 2018: An increasing trend and its relationship with social environments
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Depression in Chinese adolescents from 1989 to 2018: An increasing trend and its relationship with social environments Qian Su 1 & Guofang Liu 2 Accepted: 11 November 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract With the dramatic changes in Chinese society, several psychological indicators of Chinese adolescents, such as anxiety, have also changed across birth cohorts. To examine possible birth cohort changes in Chinese adolescents, a cross-temporal meta-analysis of 102 studies (127 data points, N = 104,187) was conducted. The results showed that Chinese adolescents’ scores on the Self-rating Depression Scale increased by at least .76 standard deviations from 1989 to 2018. In addition, male students demonstrated increasing depression over time, whereas female students did not. Chinese adolescents’ depression was significantly correlated with some negative social indicators (e.g., unemployment rate and crime rate) in the corresponding years, 3 years prior, and 1 year prior to the depression data collection. It is evident that social changes play an important role in predicting changes in depression. Keywords Depression . Cross-temporal meta-analysis . Social change . Chinese adolescents . Birth cohort
Introduction In recent years, psychology has attracted much more attention and exhibited an increasing influence on government policies in China. For example, the Chinese government promulgated the Pilot Program for the Construction of National Societal Psychological Service System in 2018 and Guidance on Strengthening Mental Health Services in 2016. These strategies can be considered a response to a peculiar phenomenon in China, i.e., China has experienced dramatic social development and a dramatic decrease in mental health during the same period (Xin & Zhang, 2009; Xin, Zhang, & Liu, 2010). To improve citizens’ mental health, it is important to understand the changes in the mental health of Chinese people in different years. This study aims to examine the birth cohort changes in depression among Chinese adolescents (aged 12–18) from 1989 to 2018. Depression in adolescents is an actively researched domain in clinical and developmental psychology. On the one hand, abundant evidence suggests that depression is an important * Guofang Liu [email protected] 1
Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
2
School of Economics and Management, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai 201306, China
factor in adolescents’ poor academic performance, unintended pregnancy, suicide, and substance use problems (KeenanMiller, Hammen, & Brennan, 2007; Luk, Wang, & SimonsMorton, 2010; McCarty et al., 2008; Owens, Stevenson, Hadwin, & Norgeta, 2012; Reed, Nugent, & Cooper, 2015). On the other hand, researchers have revealed that depression is among the most frequently experienced mental health problems among adolescents (Greenberger, Chen, Tally, & Qi, 2000; Twenge & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2002). In a recent study, the prevalence rate of depression among Chinese adolescent
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