The Depression And Anxiety Status Among Secondary Vocational School Students And Effects Of Psychotherapy On Improving Depressive Or Anxiety Symptoms

Objective: We aimed to(1)assess the prevalence of depressive or anxiety symptoms among secondary vocational school students in China,to(2)examine whether sensation seeking moderates the association between parental rearing style and depressive or anxiety symptoms,and to(3)evaluate the effects of Expressive Art Therapy-based Psychotherapy on improving depressive or anxiety symptoms of adolescents with high levels of sensation seeking.Methods:(1)Multistage sampling was used to select 7025 adolescents from secondary vocational schools all over China.Sensation seeking,depressive or anxiety symptoms,and parental rearing styles were measured by the Chinese version of Brief Sensation Seeking Scale,the Egna Minnen av Barndoms Uppfostran,and Depression,Anxiety and Stress Scale,respectively.Generalized linear models were used to explore the interaction between sensation seeking and parental rearing styles towards depressive oranxiety symptoms.(2)An Expressive Art Therapy-based Psychotherapy was developed.Students with a high level of sensation seeking were recruited into research,yielding a sample consisting of an intervention group(n=100)and a control group(n=100).Students in the intervention group received an 8-session psychotherapy while no intervention was conducted in the control group.The depressive and anxiety symptoms were both evaluated before the intervention and after the intervention.Difference in Difference Model(DID)was applied to evaluate the effects of Expressive Art Therapy-based Psychotherapy.Results:(1)The prevalence of depressive and anxiety symptoms in the adolescents were 47.0%(3086/6562)and 58.2%(3819/6562)respectively.(2)When the adolescents reported high levels of sensation seeking,paternal and maternal overprotection were both positively associated with depressive symptoms(?=0.793,P<0.001;?=0.772,P<0.001),and paternal overprotection was associated with increasing levels of anxiety symptoms(?=0.518,P=0.004).(3)The results of DID has demonstrated that the depressive symptoms(?=-7.636,P<0.001)and anxiety symptoms(?=-8.896,P<0.001)were both improved better in the intervention group than those in the control group.Conclusion:(1)Our findings contributed to the understanding of the moderating role of sensation seeking.It also suggests that adolescents in high levels of sensation seeking may require more attention on parental overprotection and depressive or anxiety symptoms,and has implications for personality-target prevention and treatment efforts for depressive and anxiety disorders.(2)The Expressive Art Therapy-basedPsychotherapy was effective in reducing the depressive and anxiety symptoms among secondary vocational school students.And the mid-term and long-term effects of the psychotherapy should be further warranted by follow-up research.Additionally,this psychotherapy could be applied to other adolescent groups to testify its effectiveness in reducing depressive and anxiety symptoms of adolescents.