Employment-related anxiety and depression in senior college students in China.
OBJECTIVE
To examine the association of employment-related events with depression and anxiety in senior college students in China.


METHODS
Altogether 1321 senior college students were recruited from Central South University and the survey was administered anonymously. Anxiety and depression were assessed with the Self-rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), respectively. Employment-related events were reflected by the employment-related options when students were surveyed. Logistic regression was used to estimate the effect of employment-related events on anxiety and depression.


RESULTS
We collected 1178 valid questionnaires. Taking 50 and 16 as the cutting-point of SAS and CES-D, we found 18.9% and 55.4% of the participants showed symptoms of anxiety and depression, respectively. After controlling confounding factors, those students who had taken the entrance exam of graduate schools and were optimistic for the result, those who had taken the entrance exam of graduate schools but were pessimistic for the result, and those who neither took the entrance exam of graduate schools nor received a job offer, had a higher risk of anxiety than those who would attend a graduate school without exam, and the odds ratios were 2.5, 2.3, and 3.5, respectively. For students' depression, the odds ratios of the three categories mentioned above were 2.0, 1.5, and 2.6, respectively.


CONCLUSIONS
Senior college students who face bad employment-related events are at a higher risk of anxiety and depression.
Peng
Minning
M
Department of Epidemiology and Health Statistics, School of Public Health, Central South University, Changsha 410078, China.
Hu
Guoqing
G
Dong
Jing
J
Zhang
Lingling
L
Liu
Binbin
B
Sun
Zhenqiu
Z
D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000453:epidemiology*; D002681:China / Q000453:epidemiology; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003863:Depression / Q000453:epidemiology*; D004651:Employment / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D012307:Risk Factors; D013334:Students; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014478:Unemployment / Q000523:psychology*; D014495:Universities; D055815:Young Adult