Risk Management and Healthcare Policy,
September 18, 2024
Purpose: Depression is a growing public health concern around the world. For adolescents, depression not only impedes healthy development, but is negatively associated with academic performance. The purpose of this paper is to examine the prevalence of adolescent depressive symptoms in a sample of rural primary and junior high school students. Additionally, we examine various factors to identify subgroups within the sample that may be more vulnerable to depression. Finally, we explore the extent to which depression correlates with academic performance and conduct a series of heterogeneity analyses.
Patients and Methods: We utilize cross-sectional data derived from 30 schools in underdeveloped regions of rural China encompassing primary and junior high school students (n = 1,609).
Results: We find a high prevalence of depression, with 23% and 9% of students experiencing general depression (depression score ≥ 14) and severe depression (depression score ≥ 21), respectively. Female gender, elevated stress and anxiety levels, boarding at school, exposure to bullying, and having depressed caregiver(s) are positively correlated with depressive symptoms, while high social support exhibits a negative association. Importantly, our analyses consistently show a significantly negative link between depression and academic performance, which is measured using standardized math tests. For instance, transitioning from a non-depressed state to a state of general depression (depression score ≥ 14) is linked to a decline of 0.348– 0.406 standard deviations in math scores (p < 0.01). Heterogeneity analyses reveal that this adverse relationship is more pronounced for male students, boarding students, those with lower social support, individuals with more educated mothers, and those with lower family assets.
Conclusion: Our findings underscore the high prevalence of depression in rural schools and the detrimental impact on academic performance. We advocate for the implementation of policies aimed at reducing student depression, particularly within vulnerable populations and subgroups.
Cognitive and social-emotional development in the first three years of life is associated with later skills. However, little is known about the paths of developmental delays in both cognitive and social-emotional skills before age 3 or to what extent these paths predict later developmental outcomes. The aim of this study is to examine the associations between the different paths of developmental delays in both cognitive and social-emotional skills of children before age 3 and the levels of development of the children when they are preschool age. Using a longitudinal data collected at three time points from 1245 children and their caregivers in rural China, we identified four different paths of developmental delays in cognitive and social-emotional before age 3 and examined how these paths are associated with different levels of developmental outcomes at preschool age. We used a non-parametric standardization approach and an ordinary least squares model to perform our analyses. Findings show that rates of developmental delays in either cognitive or social-emotional domain or both domains are high at all different time points, ranging from 20% to 55% for cognitive delays and 42% to 61% for social-emotional delays. Over half of children experienced deteriorating levels of either cognitive or social-emotional development before age 3. A large share of children was found to be persistently delayed in either domain. Only a small share of children raised their levels of development in either domain before age 3. In addition, we identified certain socioeconomic status of the family that are associated with never or deteriorating path of child developmental delays. More importantly, we revealed that different paths of developmental delays before age 3 have predictive power on different levels of developmental outcomes at preschool age. Our results suggest that actions are needed at the earliest times to improve child development when children are still infants or toddlers.
This brief presents the findings of an experiment that measures how persuasive AI-generated propaganda is compared to foreign propaganda articles written by humans.
The online child safety ecosystem has already witnessed several key improvements in the months following the April publication of a landmark Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) report, writes Riana Pfefferkorn, formerly a research scholar at the SIO and now a policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI).
Background: The association between sleep patterns and young students’ mental health, which is crucial for their development, remains understudied in rural China. Therefore, the relationship between sleep patterns and mental health among primary and junior high school students in rural China was examined. Method: A total of 1592 primary and junior high school students from rural areas of Gansu Province were surveyed, and the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS) was utilized to assess mental health, alongside self-reported data on their daily sleep patterns. Results: Significant sleep inadequacies were identified: 28% of students received less than 8 h of sleep on weekdays, and 19% went to bed later than recommended. On weekends, 38% of students had delayed bedtimes, though only 7.2% received less than 8 h of sleep. Notably, a “U-shaped” relationship was uncovered between sleep duration and mental health for students on weekends, with optimal mental health correlated with receiving 10–11 h of sleep, while both shorter and longer sleep durations on weekends worsened outcomes. This pattern is absent on weekdays. Additionally, adequate sleep and an earlier bedtime was linked to a 6–8% decrease in mental health risks. Conclusions: These findings provide valuable insights for policymakers seeking to enhance student mental well-being in rural settings, emphasizing the importance of implementing measures that promote balanced sleep habits among young students.
