The Mediating Role of Avoidant Personality Disorder Features in the Relationship Between Stressful Life Events and...

Stressful life events are risk factors of depression. To explore whether the avoidant personality disorder (AVPD) features play a mediating role between stressful life events (SLEs) and depression among Chinese first-year university students.

The cross-sectional study was conducted from April to October 2018. The participants were the freshmen selected from Jining Medical University and Weifang Medical University (n=7390) in Shandong Province in China. Depression was assessed by the Beck Depression Inventory-II, AVPD were measured by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM 5). The data were processed and analyzed by SPSS24.0 software, Pearson correlation analysis and PROCESS3.3 program intermediary analysis. The method of Bootstrap was adopted to determine whether the AVPD features act as mediating factors in the association between the NLEs and depression.

A total of 34.68% of the participants reported one to three AVPD features, and 18.15% reported four to seven AVPD features. AVPD features (r=0.384, P<0.05) and the SLEs (r=0.309, P<0.05) were positively related to the risk of depression, respectively. AVPD features play a partial mediating effect on the relationship between SLEs and depression (the effect value is 0.133, P < 0.01; 32.28% of the total effect).

There might be recall bias in this cross-sectional study.

AVPD features are prevalent among Chinese university students. AVPD features displayed the mediation effect on depression related to stressful life events. Psychological interventions for depression in college students should focus not only on stress but on individual personality traits and cognitive mode. Care-givers, teachers, and health professionals should pay more attention to the early identification of the AVPD features among university students.