Psychological symptoms and associated risk factors in Chinese freshmen: a three-year follow-up study

The first year of attending university induces a stressful experience for many college students. The experience exposes these students to challenging circumstances and raises expectations, which consequently increases the risk of psychiatric disorders and may exacerbate pre-existing problems. This study was designed to explore the risk factors of psychological symptoms among freshmen in China.

A three-year follow-up study was designed in a sample of Chinese college freshmen. To set up the baseline interviews, subjects from 25 high schools in Beijing were interviewed during the first year in high school. Three years later, we followed up with the 1547 students from 15 of the previously-selected 25 high schools after they had entered universities. Association between potential risk factors and the occurrence of psychological symptoms measured by the Symptoms Check List-90 was evaluated in unconditional logistic regression models with Wald test.

Among the 1547 interviewed college freshmen in the study, 120 students (7.8%) manifested at least one psychological symptom. Personality dysfunction (OR = 3.655, 95% CI 1.967-6.793), parental rejection (OR = 2.619, 95% CI 1.544-4.442), age ≥ 20 (OR = 2.578, 95% CI 1.227-5.418), disfavored university (OR = 2.054, 95% CI 1.376-3.066), non-first-choice academic major (OR = 1.887, 95% CI 1.255-2.837) and no orientation (OR = 1.739, 95% CI 1.025-2.951) were determined to be the risk factors of psychological symptoms among the college freshmen in China.

Psychological symptoms of college freshmen are associated with personality traits, parental rearing behavior and study environment. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to changes in mental health as students enter or decide on colleges and increase education geared towards mental health issues for students in high school and universities in China.