Abstract
Objective: To describe the prevalence of chronotype and depressive symptoms among Chinese college students and to examine the association between chronotype and depressive symptoms.Methods: From April to May 2019, a cross-sectional survey was conducted among 1,179 Chinese college students from 2 universities in Anhui and Jiangxi provinces. A total of 1,135 valid questionnaires were collected, the valid response rate was 98.6%. The questionnaire investigated age, gender, major, height, weight, only child status, living place, self-reported family economy, and self-reported study burden. The chronotype was assessed by the Morning and Evening Questionnaire (MEQ). Depressive symptoms and sleep quality were evaluated by the Patient Health Questionnaire 9 (PHQ-9) and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), respectively. A Chi-square test was used to examine the proportion of depressive symptoms among Chinese college students with different demographic characteristics. The generalized linear model was used to analyze the relationships between chronotype and depressive symptoms.Results: The proportion of morning types (M-types), neutral types (N-types), and evening types (E-types) of college students were 18.4, 71.1, and 10.5%, respectively. The proportion of mild depression, moderate depression, and moderate to severe depression of participants were 32.4, 6.0, and 4.2%, respectively. Compared to the M-types, after controlled for age, gender, major, sleep quality, self-reported study burden, father's education level, and self-reported family economy, depressive symptoms were positively correlated with E-types (OR = 2.36, 95% CI: 1.49–3.73).Conclusions: There was a significant association between chronotype and depressive symptoms among Chinese college students. Further longitudinal studies were needed to clarify the causal relationship between chronotype and depressive symptoms.
Highlights
Chronotype was a unique personal biological clock system that was determined by daytime activities and bedtime preferences
A total of 1,179 college students were recruited from a medical university and a comprehensive normal university located in Hefei, Anhui Province, and Shangrao, Jiangxi Province, using stratified cluster sampling between April to May 2019
College students were from study burden high, a family with a low selfreported family economic status or father’s education level low showed higher rates of depressive symptoms
Summary
Chronotype was a unique personal biological clock system that was determined by daytime activities and bedtime preferences. The cyclic factor that determines this preference was called a circadian preference, which largely depends on an individual’s endogenous component [1]. Circadian preference was a continuum but was usually divided into three chronotypes: morning types (M-types), neutral types (N-types), and evening types (E-types) [2]. Studies have shown that E-types have been associated with increased risk for depressive symptoms [6], and people who stay up late were acknowledged to be more likely to experience depressive symptoms [7]. The propensity to be an E-types was a risk factor for triggering personality features associated with a mental disorder [1]
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