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. 2023 Mar 1:324:190-198.
doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2022.12.120. Epub 2022 Dec 28.

Comparing the centrality symptoms of major depressive disorder samples across junior high school students, senior high school students, college students and elderly adults during city lockdown of COVID-19 pandemic-A network analysis

Yanqiang Tao  1 , Wenxin Hou  1 , Haiqun Niu  2 , Zijuan Ma  3 , Zeqing Zheng  4 , Shujian Wang  5 , Xiangping Liu  6 , Liang Zhang  7
Affiliations

Comparing the centrality symptoms of major depressive disorder samples across junior high school students, senior high school students, college students and elderly adults during city lockdown of COVID-19 pandemic-A network analysis

Yanqiang Tao et al. J Affect Disord. .

Abstract

Introduction: Recently, in the view of network analysis, depression has been conceptualized as a complex and dynamic network model combining individual symptoms. To date, no studies have systematically examined and compared depressive symptom networks across different populations.

Methods: A total of 36,105 participants were recruited and asked to complete the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 among junior high school students, senior high school students, college students, and elderly adults who were more susceptible to depression during the COVID-19 lockdown in China. In the analysis, we applied the optimal cutoff score ≥ 8 for students and a score ≥ 6 for elderly adults to identify 5830 participants who were likely to be depressed. The index of "strength" was used to identify central symptoms in the network structure.

Results: The results showed that Sad Mood was the most central symptom among junior high school students, senior high school students, and college students, but the most central symptom in the elderly was Guilt. Among the top three central symptoms, Suicide Ideation was unique to senior high school students, while Anhedonia was most prevalent among college students. Guilt - Suicide Ideation, Anhedonia - Energy, Anhedonia - Sad Mood, and Sleep - Energy showed the strongest association among junior and senior high school students, college students, and elderly adults, respectively. NCT (i.e., Network Comparison Test) suggested that the network's global connectivity was ultimately inconsistent, but the network structure remained roughly intact.

Conclusion: In treatment, targeting central symptoms may be critical to alleviating depression.

Keywords: College students; Depression; Elderly adults; Junior high school students; Network analysis; Senior high school students.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The network structure of the major depressive symptoms among junior high school students, senior high school students, college students, and elderly adults.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
The strength (centrality) value (standardized Z scores) of the major depressive symptoms among junior high school students, senior high school students, college students, and elderly adults. The red dashed line indicates the core symptoms newly identified in this study (Top three). The blue dashed line denotes core symptoms that have been found in previous studies (Top three). (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
The x-axis indicates the percentage of cases of the original sample included at each step. The y-axis indicates the average of correlations between the centrality indices from the original network and the centrality indices from the networks that were re-estimated after excluding increasing percentages of cases. A for junior high school students. B for senior high school students. C for college students. D for elderly adults.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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