Mental health status of home-going peasant-workers

Xianhua LIU

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND:

As a typical puny cluster in China, peasant-workers have aroused extensive attention because of their social situation. Therefore, it has important praxis significance for establishing harmonious society to penetrate into their mental health status and improve their mental health level.

OBJECTIVE:

To investigate the mental health status of home-going peasant-workers, so as to provide a reliable basis for the effective intervention of their mental crisis.DESING A cross-sectional survey.

SETTING:

Department of Educational Science of Hengyang Normal University.

PARTICIPANTS:

The investigation was conducted in 15 provinces of China in February 2005. By means of cross-sectional survey, 300 randomly selected home-going peasant-workers were surveyed during the Spring Festival.

METHODS:

The peasant-workers were tested individually with symptom checklist-90 (SCL-90); they were given uniform directions and answered each question individually according to their own conditions in the latest week. All the answer papers were handed in on the spot. The data of SCL90 were input with Optical Mark Reader 2000 (OMR2000) into the computer for statistical analysis. The questionnaire in which more than 5 items were left unanswered or the total score was below 95 points was considered to be invalid and therefore rejected for analysis. All the data were input into the computer and statistically analyzed with SPSS 11.0 software; the intergroup differences of the measurement data were compared with the t test or analysis of variance.MAIN OUTCOME

MEASURES:

① general mental health status of the home-going peasant-workers; ② mental health status compared among the home-going peasant-workers of different gender, educational level, term on duty and earning.

RESULTS:

Totally 300 questionnaires were sent out, 275 were handed in,and the collective rate was 91.67%. Finally 245 effective participants entered the analysis of results, including 118 males and 127 females, aged 16-52 years old, with an average of 26.09 years old. The investigated results of SCL-90 showed that ① The total score and number of positive items of SCL-90 in the tested peasant-workers were significantly higher than those of Chinese adult norm (173.13±44.35, 129.96±38.70, t=15.237,P ＜ 0.001; 52.96±20.27, 24.92±18.14, t=21.654, P ＜ 0.001). ②The scores of somatization, obsession-compulsion, interpersonal sensitivity, depression,anxiety, hostility, phobia anxiety, paranoid ideation and psychoticism of the tested peasant-workers were significantly higher than those of the Chinese adult norm (1.73±0.55, 1.37±0.48, t=10.260, P ＜ 0.001; (2.12±0.56, 1.62 ±0.58, t=14.092, P ＜ 0.001; 2.10±0.59, 1.65±0.61, t=12.076, P ＜ 0.001;1.99±0.59, 1.50±0.59, t=13.072, P ＜ 0.001; 1.88±0.53, 1.39±0.43; t=14.260,P ＜ 0.001; (1.98±0.69, 1.46±0.55, t=11.951, P ＜ 0.001; 1.74±0.58,1.23±0.41, t=13.692, P ＜ 0.001; 2.00±0.61, 1.43±0.57, t=14.647, P ＜ 0.001;1.81±0.57, 1.29±0.42, t=14.472, P ＜ 0.001). ③ The mental health status had no obvious differences among the peasant-workers of different gender,educational level, earning and term on duty.

CONCLUSION:

The mental health status of the home-going peasant workers is significantly lower than that of Chinese norm, gender, educational level, earning and term on duty have great influence on the mental health of the home-going peasant-workers.