Relationship between affective temperament and the severity of depressive symptoms on medical college students / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To explore the relationship between affective temperament and the severity of depressive symptoms in medical college students.Methods:From October to November 2021, a questionnaire survey was conducted among 1 780 medical undergraduates from two medical colleges in Anhui Province.The Chinese version of temperament scale of Memphis, Pisa, Paris and San Diego autoquestionnaire (TEMPS-A) and the Chinese version of the Beck depression inventory (BDI-Ⅱ) were used to evaluate the affective temperament and depressive symptoms of medical college students, respectively.SPSS 23.0 software was used for statistical analysis of the data.Ordinal Logistic regression model was used to analyze the impact of affective temperament characteristics on the severity of depressive symptoms.Results:The detection of depressive symptoms among medical college students was 6.4% with mild depression, 7.4% with moderate and severe depression and 86.2% without depression.The scores of cyclothymic, depressive, irritable, hyperthymia and anxious temperaments in TEMPS-A were significantly different among medical college students with different levels of depressive symptoms (all P<0.05). There were statistically significant differences in the detection rates of depression symptoms among medical college students with different typical affective temperament characteristics(all P<0.05). Ordinal Logistic regression model analysis showed that typical cyclothymic temperament ( OR=5.05, 95% CI 3.68-6.94), typical depressive temperament ( OR=7.69, 95% CI 4.64-12.86), typical hyperthymia temperament ( OR=0.30, 95% CI 0.15-0.58), and typical anxious temperament ( OR=2.41, 95% CI 1.75-3.32) were influencing factors for the severity of depressive symptoms in medical college students. Conclusion:Affective temperament, especially typical depressive temperament, typical cyclothymic temperament and typical anxious temperament can affect the severity of depressive symptoms in medical college students.