Relationships between stress, coping and depressive symptoms among overseas university preparatory Chinese students: a cross-sectional study

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Tony Szu-Hsien Lee¹  Gwo-Liang Yeh¹  Yu-Mei Y Chao²  Hao-Jan Yang³  Pi-Chi Chou⁴ 

[1] Department of Health Promotion and Health Education, National Taiwan Normal University, 162, Sec 1, He-Ping East Road, 10610, Taipei, Taiwan;Department of Nursing, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, 1, Sec 1, Jen-Ai Rd, 100, Taipei, Taiwan;Department of Public Health, Chung Shan Medical University, 110, Sec.1, Jianguo N. Rd, 40201, Taichung City, Taiwan;Nursing Department, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, 201, Sec. 2, Shih-Pai Road, 112, Taipei, Taiwan;

关键词: Depressive Symptom;    Coping Strategy;    Standardize Root Mean Square Residual;    Life Goal;    Sobel Test;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-11-352

 received in 2010-11-01, accepted in 2011-05-19,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundMental health problems in young people are an important public health issue. Students leaving their hometown and family at a young age to pursue better educational opportunities overseas are confronted with life adjustment stress, which in turn affects their mental health and academic performance. This study aimed to examine the relationships among stress, coping strategies, and depressive symptoms using the stress coping framework in overseas Chinese university preparatory students in Taiwan.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted at an overseas Chinese university preparatory institute in Taiwan. Of enrolled overseas Chinese university preparatory students at 2009, 756 completed a structured questionnaire measuring stress, strategies for coping with it, and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale.ResultsHigh levels of stress significantly predicted the adoption of active, problem-focused coping strategies (R2 = 0.13, p < .01) and passive, emotion-focused coping strategies (R2 = 0.24, p < .01). Acceptable CFI, SRMR, and RMSEA values from the structural equation modeling analysis demonstrated that the model satisfactorily fits the stress coping framework, after active coping strategies were eliminated from the model. Results from the Sobel test revealed that passive coping strategies mediated the relation between stress and depressive symptoms (z = 8.06, p < .001).ConclusionOur study results suggested that stress is associated with coping strategies and depressive symptoms and passive strategies mediate the relation between stress and depressive symptoms in overseas Chinese university preparatory students.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Chou et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.