Investigation Of Depressive Symptoms And Its Influencing Factors In Primary School Students Of Sichuan Province After Wenchuan Earthquake

Background:Mental depression is a common disease between children and adolescent, its overwhelming impression would bring negative effects on children's learning and living, and further could lead to development of suicide. After Wenchuan earthquake, the locals suffered great mental diseases, especially the teenagers in the development state of physiology and psychology, the influence is more apparent. Compared with the non-earthquake children, the earthquake shocked children are more likely to develop mental depression diseases, and the symptoms would be more serious, which would last more long time.Objective:To investigate the prevalence of depression symptoms of Primary School Students in Sichuan Province after the earthquake happened one year later, and study its influenced factors such as earthquake disaster, social support, psychological resilience and the aid, providing guides for the psychological intervention.Methods:Qingchuan district was selected by stratified cluster, three primary school were chosen according to the distance of the medical treatment position, each school included 3,4,5,6 grades. We used children depression scale to assess psychological symptoms depression in all of these primary pupils; California health questionnaire was also used to evaluate resilience; meanwhile, the earthquake situation, social support were included in our survey too. The samples were collected by the trained investigators, each item was well explained before pupils finished it independently. The results were gathered statistics by chi-square analysis, T-text and Logistic regression analysis respectively.Results:The proportion of depressive symptoms of the pupils was 26.5% in total, boys for 29.5%, girls for 23.2%, which made statistical significance; the pupils accepted aids showed less depressive symptoms with 25.0%, While the percentage of the non-aids pupils was 38.5%, which made statistical difference too. In the depressive analysis, it showed that lating for school, insuffient attention to class, violating the school regulations, less respecting to teachers, evening insomnia, breaking down the breakfast were all associated with symptoms, could be a risk to depression. The children depression scale revealed that depression rating scores were negative correlated with social aids and resilience, while the scores were less than control group in family support, school support, peer support and psychological resilience. Logistic regression analysis showed that when the pupils got peer support with every one points, the risk of depression would reduce to 0.964 times, and the prevalence rate of the pupils near to the earthquake district was 2.618 times than the remote school, and those with social aids showed a less depressive impact which was 0.552 times in contrast to those not, our survey also manifested that those having good sleep, holding breakfast everyday, finishing homework on the their own, and getting well touch with classmates showed a lower depression occurrence than those not, which were 0.273, 0.567,0.611,0.545 respectively.Conclusion:The percentage of depressive symptoms of earthquake one year later was about 26.5%. Social donation, good school environment, support pupils psychological resilience and good habit of daily life were all associated with decreasing depression.