Abstract
Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been rapidly transmitted worldwide, which contributed to various psychological problems (such as fear, depression, and anxiety) among the general population in China. The purpose of this study is to investigate the prevalence and associated factors of depressive symptoms among Chinese adults.Methods: A cross-sectional study of Chinese adults was conducted during 17–29 February 2020. Symptoms of depression were assessed using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression scale (CES-D).Results: A total of 3,399 respondents were included in the analysis. It was observed that 14.2% (481/3,399) of the participants were screened positive for depressive symptoms. In a multivariate logistic regression analysis, older age (OR = 0.98; 95% CI, 0.97–0.99), smoking (OR = 1.57; 95% CI, 1.10–2.26), self-rated health (good: OR = 0.49; 95% CI, 0.37–0.66; fairly: OR = 0.60; 95% CI, 0.45–0.80), having greater support scores (OR = 0.95; 95% CI, 0.94–0.96), knowledge about the main symptom of COVID-19 (very clearly: OR = 0.58; 95% CI, 0.42–0.79; relatively clearly: OR = 0.59; 95% CI, 0.44–0.79), and staying in Wuhan within 3 months before the outbreak of epidemic (OR = 1.78; 95% CI, 1.34–2.38) were associated with depressive symptoms.Conclusion: A considerable proportion of the general population in China had depressive symptoms during the COVID-19 epidemic. Routine screening and targeted interventions for depression are needed among high-risk depressed individuals during the COVID-19 epidemic.
Highlights
IntroductionThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been rapidly transmitted worldwide, which contributed to various psychological problems (such as fear, depression, and anxiety) among the general population in China
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been rapidly transmitted worldwide, which contributed to various psychological problems among the general population in China
The 3,399 respondents from 280 cities in China had an average age of 27.5 years with standard deviation of 11.4 years; 95.5% of them were of Han nationality, and 66.5% were female
Summary
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been rapidly transmitted worldwide, which contributed to various psychological problems (such as fear, depression, and anxiety) among the general population in China. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) spread rapidly worldwide, causing high morbidity and heavy economic burden (Docherty et al, 2020; Karagiannidis et al, 2020; Onder et al, 2020; Tadesse et al, 2020; Tang et al, 2020; Wu and McGoogan, 2020; Loomba et al, 2021). On 7 January 2020, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) was identified as the etiological agent of the epidemic by genome sequencing (Zhu et al, 2020). Findings from previous studies suggested that outbreaks of major communicable diseases, including severe acute respiratory syndrome and Middle East respiratory syndrome, increased the risk of depression in the populations affected (Mak et al, 2009; Keita et al, 2017). Timely psychological assessment and appropriate intervention to prevent depressive symptom is necessary
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