Relationships among personality traits, resilience and depressive symptoms of students in Wuhan City

Abstract

To investigate the relationships among personality traits, resilience and depressive symptoms of primary and high school students. Totally 6019 students aged 10-17 from 5 primary schools(grades 5-6), 3 junior middle schools(grades 7-9) and 2 senior high schools(grade 1) years were selected by cluster sampling in Wuhan, from September 2015 to January 2016. Among them, there were 2420 primary school students, 2912 junior high school students and 687 senior high school students. In addition, 3071 students were male, 2948 students were female. Participants were asked to complete self-report questionnaires, including demographic characteristic questionnaire, the center for epidemiological studies depression scale(CES-D), the connor davidson resilience scale(CD-RISC) and the NEO-five factor inventory(NEO-FFI). Multivariate Logistic regression analysis was used to analyze the influence factors of depressive symptoms in primary and high school students. The detection rate of depressive symptoms was 10. 5%(635/6019). Multivariate Logistic regression analysis showed that after adjusting for grade and family history of depression, neuroticism(OR=4. 53, 95% CI 3. 88-5. 28) and openness(OR=1. 33, 95% CI 1. 18-1. 50) were positively associated with depressive symptoms. But the higher level of extraversion(OR=0. 70, 95% CI 0. 62-0. 79) and conscientiousness(OR=0. 77, 95% CI 0. 67-0. 90) and resilience(OR=0. 77, 95% CI 0. 67-0. 88) were associated with lower risk of depressive symptoms in primary and high school students. Neuroticism and openness might be positively correlated with, whereas extraversion, conscientiousness and resilience might be negatively correlated with the onsets of depressive symptoms in primary and secondary school students. Thus, developing adaptive personality and improving resilience would contribute to the prevention and intervention of depression in primary and high school students.