Peer-reviewed article
The mediating role of childhood maltreatment in the association between residence migration and adolescent depression.
Wancheng Zheng, Lulu Wen, Yunjian Huang, Liyuan Huang, Chuming Yan et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined how childhood maltreatment explains the link between moving to a new place and depression in adolescents. Researchers surveyed over 14,000 junior middle school students in China, comparing those who had migrated with those who had lived locally their whole lives. Migrant adolescents reported higher rates of depression than local adolescents. The study found that childhood maltreatment almost completely explains why migrant adolescents experience more depression, suggesting that reducing maltreatment could improve mental health outcomes for young people who have moved.
Key points
- 58.2% of migrant adolescents reported depressive symptoms compared to 53.3% of local adolescents
- Migrant status increased the odds of depression (OR = 1.136, 95% CI: 1.013-1.273)
- Childhood maltreatment completely mediates the relationship between migration and depression
- Good parent-child relationships and resilience reduce depression risk in all adolescents
- Parental divorce is an additional risk factor for depression in migrant adolescents
Limitations
The study is cross-sectional, so causality cannot be definitively established. The research was conducted in China and may not generalise to other cultural contexts or countries with different migration patterns.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: It is well established that residence migration can negatively affect the mental health of adolescents. However, the related factors that mediate the association between residence migration and depression are still uncertain. METHODS: The participants were 16,037 adolescents in junior middle schools. A self-administered questionnaire was used for the survey. In addition to collecting general demographic characteristics of the participants, including age, gender, local residence status, only child status, parental marriage status and parent-child relationship, the questionnaire also contained the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire, the short form of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS software. RESULTS: A total of 14,059 valid questionnaires were collected, resulting in 12,122 local adolescents, defined as being born and raised locally, and 1937 migrant adolescents, defined as being transferred from other regions. Meanwhile, 53.3 % of local adolescents and 58.2 % of migrant adolescents reported depressive symptoms. This result indicated that residence migration might contribute to depression symptoms(OR = 1.136, 95%CI: 1.013-1.273, p < 0.05). Childhood maltreatment and parental divorce are risk factors for depression in migrant adolescents. For all adolescents, resilience and a good parent-child relationship may reduce the risk of depression. Childhood maltreatment completely mediates residence migration-related depression(95 % bootstrap CI = 0.146, 0.323). CONCLUSION: This study revealed that residence migration could contribute to adolescent depression, and childhood maltreatment may largely mediate this process, providing new insight into the relationship between adolescent depressive symptoms and residence migration. Reducing childhood maltreatment may effectively improve the depressive symptoms of migrant adolescents.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- The study does not evaluate an intervention but rather examines the mediating mechanisms between migration and depression through childhood maltreatment
- Population
- 16,037 junior middle school adolescents in China; 12,122 local-born and 1,937 migrant adolescents
Key finding
Migrant adolescents had significantly higher depression rates (58.2%) than local adolescents (53.3%)
Zheng et al. · PubMed (US National Library of Medicine) · 7 Nov 2023