Survey on anxiety and depression among the third-year junior high school students in Nanning city / 四川精神卫生

ABSTRACT

ObjectiveTo study the anxiety and depression status of the third-year junior high school students in Nanning city， and to discuss their relationships with test anxiety， so as to provide references for targeted psychological intervention for students. MethodsFrom May to June， 2021， a simple random sampling method was adopted to randomly enroll three classes of third-grade students from one junior high school in each district and county of Nanning city. The selected students were assessed using Test Anxiety Scale （TAS）， Self-rating Anxiety Scale （SAS） and Self-rating Depression Scale （SDS）. Thereafter， Pearson correlation analysis was conducted to explore the correlation among each scale score. ResultsA total of 2 080 students participated in the survey， and 1 826 （87.79%） valid questionnaires were collected. Among them， 999 students （54.71%） felt uncomfortable due to the test. Anxiety and depression were detected in 577 （31.60%） and 830 （45.45%） students， respectively. TAS score of female students was higher than that of male students ［（16.75±6.78） vs. （15.08±6.97）， t=-5.136， P<0.01］， SAS score of female students was higher than that of male students ［（46.05±10.43） vs. （44.16±10.87）， t=-3.769， P<0.01］， and SDS score of female students was higher than that of male students ［（52.34±12.44） vs. （49.98±12.17）， t=-4.039， P<0.01］. Correlation analysis showed that SAS and SDS scores were positively correlated with TAS score （r=0.574， 0.531， P<0.01）， and the correlation still existed after further controlling for age and gender （r=0.570， 0.526， P<0.01）. ConclusionThe third-year junior high school students in Nanning city suffer a high prevalence rate of anxiety and depression， and the two psychological states have positive relations with TAS. Furthermore， both anxiety and depression are more severe in female students than in male students.