Correlations of religious beliefs with anxiety and depression of Chinese adolescents

Lejun Li; Xiliang Liu; Pingping Wang; Miao Qu; Meihong Xiu

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1354922

Correlations of religious beliefs with anxiety and depression of Chinese adolescents

Front Psychiatry. 2024 Mar 1:15:1354922. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1354922. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Lejun Li¹, Xiliang Liu², Pingping Wang³, Miao Qu³, Meihong Xiu⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Neurology, Suzhou TCM Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Suzhou, China.
² Qingdao Mental Health Center, Qingdao, China.
³ Neurology Department, Xuan Wu Hospital of Capital Medical University, Beijing, China.
⁴ Peking University Huilongguan Clinical Medical School, Beijing Huilongguan Hospital, Beijing, China.

Abstract

Objective: This study was designed to investigate the prevalence of religious belief and its relationship with psychiatric symptoms among Chinese adolescents.

Methods: This study recruited 11,603 adolescents in Grades 7-9 from March 21 to 31, 2020 in five cities in China. The religious beliefs of adolescents were collected by asking whether they held religious beliefs and what type of religious beliefs they held. The Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 Scale (GAD-7) were used to assess depressive and anxiety symptoms in all adolescents. Demographics, religious beliefs, and mental health status were collected through the professional version of Wenjuanxing.

Results: Of 11,069 valid questionnaires collected, 847 (7.7%) reported holding religious beliefs. Adolescents with religious beliefs showed significantly more severe symptoms of depression and anxiety compared to those without religious beliefs (both p<0.05). Logistic regression analysis revealed that religious belief was a risk factor for symptoms of depression (OR = 1.37, 95%CI: 1.16-1.61, p < 0.001) and anxiety (OR = 1.49, 95%CI: 1.23-1.79, p < 0.001) after controlling age, gender, and parental marital status.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that religiousness in adolescents was associated with a higher likelihood of depression/more intense depressive symptoms. In addition, religious Chinese adolescents should be provided with more resources to help them cope with mental health concerns.

Keywords: adolescents; anxiety; association; depression; religious belief.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This study was supported by grants from the Key Program of Natural Science Foundation of Nanjing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (XZR2023023); Jiangsu Provincial Science and Technology Development General Program of Traditional Chinese Medicine (MS2023093); Suzhou Science and Technology Development Program (Basic Research - Medical Applied Basic Research) (SKY2023215); Suzhou Gusu Health Talent Program Project (GSWS2022077) and Capital’s Funds for Health Improvement and Research (SF2020-1-2011). The authors report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.