| Summary: | 博士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 健康政策與管理研究所 === 102 === Background and objectives: In recent years, adolescent depression has become a serious public health issue. From life course perspective, early life exposures, such as early socioeconomic status and birth weight, may increase risk for mental disorder in later life. However, little is known about the long-term effects of early life exposures on depression trajectories. This study aimed to investigate how early socioeconomic status and birth weight affect the depression trajectories among adolescents.
Methods: Data used in this study were obtained from the Taiwan Education Panel Survey (TEPS), Center for Survey Research, Academia Sinica. A total of 3,600 participants who completed four waves of survey between 2001 and 2007 were included in this study analysis. The measures collected included: (1) independent variable: depression (scale range: 6-24); (2) dependent variables: early socioeconomic status and birth weight; (3) confounders: sex, negative life events, social support, and parental mental illness. Growth curve model and group-based trajectory model were used to analyze the association between depression and early socioeconomic status while adjusting for confounders.
Result: In the growth cure analysis, the results reveal that birth weight, childhood economic hardship, school negative life events, and family support significantly influenced initial levels of depression in girls. Negative life events and parental mental illness significantly influenced development of depression in girls. However, both initial levels and development of depression were only correlated with school negative life events in boys. And in both genders four distinct developmental trajectories were identified. Among girls, the four depression trajectories were consistently low (n=709, 39%), moderate (n=891, 46.5%), chronically high (n=174, 9.5%) and decreasing (n=84, 5%). Among boys, four depression trajectories were consistently low (n=836, 48.1%), moderate (n=762, 42.8%), decreasing (n=57, 3.7%) and increasing (n=87, 5.4%). We found that girls’ trajectory classes were associated with childhood economic hardship, negative life events, and family and peer social support, whereas boys’ trajectory classes were associated with father education, school negative events and peer support.
Conclusion: Early socioeconomic status could contribute disparities of adolescent depression, and affect the developmental of depression trajectories. However, gender differences existed in sensitivity to different early socioeconomic status indicators, and birth weight was only correlated with initial levels of depression in girls.
|
|---|
