Anxiety and depressive symptoms in college students during the late stage of the COVID-19 outbreak: a network approach

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Abstract

Mental health problems are common in college students even in the late stage of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak. Network analysis is a novel approach to explore interactions of mental disorders at the symptom level. The aim of this study was to elucidate characteristics of depressive and anxiety symptoms network in college students in the late stage of the COVID-19 outbreak. A total of 3062 college students were included. The seven-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7) and nine-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) were used to measure anxiety and depressive symptoms, respectively. Central symptoms and bridge symptoms were identified based on centrality and bridge centrality indices, respectively. Network stability was examined using the case-dropping procedure. The strongest direct relation was between anxiety symptoms “Nervousness” and “Uncontrollable worry”. “Fatigue” has the highest node strength in the anxiety and depression network, followed by “Excessive worry”, “Trouble relaxing”, and “Uncontrollable worry”. “Motor” showed the highest bridge strength, followed by “Feeling afraid” and “Restlessness”. The whole network was robust in both stability and accuracy tests. Central symptoms “Fatigue”, “Excessive worry”, “Trouble relaxing” and “Uncontrollable worry”, and critical bridge symptoms “Motor”, “Feeling afraid” and “Restlessness” were highlighted in this study. Targeting interventions to these symptoms may be important to effectively alleviate the overall level of anxiety and depressive symptoms in college students.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Sha Sha: sarahbon@163.com

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Transl Psychiatry

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Transl Psychiatry

Title: Translational Psychiatry

Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 2158-3188

Publication date (Electronic): 17 December 2021

Publication date PMC-release: 17 December 2021

Publication date Collection: 2021

Volume: 11

Electronic Location Identifier: 638

Affiliations

[1 ]GRID grid.437123.0, ISNI 0000 0004 1794 8068, Unit of Psychiatry, Department of Public Health and Medicinal Administration, & Institute of Translational Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, , University of Macau, ; Macao, SAR China

[2 ]GRID grid.437123.0, ISNI 0000 0004 1794 8068, Centre for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, , University of Macau, ; Macao, SAR China

[3 ]GRID grid.437123.0, ISNI 0000 0004 1794 8068, Institute of Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Macau, ; Macao, SAR China

[4 ]GRID grid.262246.6, ISNI 0000 0004 1765 430X, Department of Public Health, , Medical College, Qinghai University, ; Xining, Qinghai Province China

[5 ]GRID grid.24696.3f, ISNI 0000 0004 0369 153X, The National Clinical Research Center for Mental Disorders & Beijing Key Laboratory of Mental Disorders, Beijing Anding Hospital & the Advanced Innovation Center for Human Brain Protection, Capital Medical University, ; Beijing, China

[6 ]GRID grid.16890.36, ISNI 0000 0004 1764 6123, School of Nursing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, ; Hong Kong, SAR China

[7 ]GRID grid.16890.36, ISNI 0000 0004 1764 6123, Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, & Mental Health Research Centre, , Hong Kong Polytechnic University, ; Hong Kong, SAR China

[8 ]GRID grid.445012.6, ISNI 0000 0001 0643 7658, Department of Business Administration, , Hong Kong Shue Yan University, ; Hong Kong, China

[9 ]GRID grid.1008.9, ISNI 0000 0001 2179 088X, Department of Psychiatry, , The Melbourne Clinic and St Vincent’s Hospital, University of Melbourne, Richmond, ; Victoria, Australia

Author information

Wei Bai http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9579-9959

Jessie Jingxia Lin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8189-8216

Yu-Tao Xiang http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2906-0029

Article

Publisher ID: 1738

DOI: 10.1038/s41398-021-01738-4

PMC ID: 8678580

PubMed ID: 34921138

SO-VID: 2a4ec08d-33ba-49c2-94b7-ed4afbca4246

License:

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

History

Date received : 8 August 2021

Date revision received : 23 October 2021

Date accepted : 28 October 2021

Funding

Funded by: Beijing Municipal Administration of Hospitals Incubating Program (PX2018063)

Funded by: The study was supported by the National Science and Technology Major Project for investigational new drug (2018ZX09201-014), the Beijing Municipal Science & Technology Commission (No. Z181100001518005), and the University of Macau (MYRG2019-00066-FHS).