Gender-Specific Trajectories of Depressive Symptoms in Chinese Children: Relations with Basic Psychological Needs Satisf
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Gender-Specific Trajectories of Depressive Symptoms in Chinese Children: Relations with Basic Psychological Needs Satisfaction at School Mengting Zhong 1,2,3,4 & E. Scott Huebner 5 & Lili Tian 1,2,3,4
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This longitudinal study identified gender-specific developmental trajectories of depressive symptoms in Chinese children and their relations with basic psychological needs satisfaction at school (satisfaction of autonomy needs at school, relatedness needs at school, and competence needs at school). A total of 692 Chinese elementary school students in grades 3 and 4 (Mage = 8.96 years; SD = 0.76; 53.6% boys) comprised the sample. Assessments were conducted every 6 months on six occasions over 30 months. Growth mixture modeling (GMM) was used to explore the depressive symptom trajectories for boys and girls separately. Four trajectories were identified for girls: low (60.3%), high (12.4%), increasing (9.8%), and high-start (17.5%). Two trajectories were identified for boys: low (86.5%) and high (13.5%). After controlling for anxiety, the results showed that compared to the low trajectory of depressive symptoms, lower satisfaction of relatedness needs at school predicted the high and high-start trajectories for girls, and lower satisfaction of competence needs at school predicted the high trajectory for boys. The findings of the varying developmental patterns of depressive symptoms and their relations with basic psychological needs satisfaction at school inform strategies for monitoring depressive symptoms among children as well as effective strategies for prevention and intervention. Keywords Depressive symptoms . Gender-specific trajectories . Basic psychological needs satisfaction at school . Chinese children
Introduction
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-020-00674-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Lili Tian [email protected] 1
School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, People’s Republic of China
2
Center for Studies of Psychological Application, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, People’s Republic of China
3
Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, People’s Republic of China
4
Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, South China Normal University, Ministry of Education, Guangzhou 510631, People’s Republic of China
5
Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA
Depressive symptoms are among the most common symptoms of childhood psychopathology (World Health Organization 2018). Children are faced with many daily stressors that may increase their risk for depressive symptoms, such as maladaptive parenting styles, bullying and peer victimization, as well as a series of complicated emotional, psychological and biological changes coinciding with the transitio
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