Prevalence and changes in depressive symptoms among postgraduate students: A systematic review and meta‐analysis from 1980 to 2020

Abstract

Education actively helps us develop our well-being and health, but postgraduate students are at high risk of depression. The prevalence of depression symptoms varies from 6.2% to 84.7% among them, and its changes throughout the years remains unclear. The present study aimed to estimate the real prevalence of depression symptoms among postgraduate students and the changes from 1980 to 2020. Thirty-seven primary studies with 41 independent reports were included in the meta-analysis (none reports were in high-quality, three were medium-to-high quality, 20 were low-to-medium quality, and 18 were low-quality), involving 27,717 postgraduate students. The pooled prevalence of overall, mild, moderate, and severe depression symptoms was 34% (95% CI: 28-40, I 2 = 98.6%), 27% (95% CI: 22-32, I 2 = 85.8%), 13% (95% CI: 8-21, I 2 = 97.3%), and 8% (95% CI: 6-11, I 2 = 81.0%), respectively. Overall, the prevalence of depression symptoms remained relatively constant through the years following 1980

Media use degree and depression: A latent profile analysis from Chinese residents

“…In contrast to the present study, Nikčević’s findings suggest that openness to personality may hinder depression ( Nikcevic et al, 2021 ). The results of previous studies were also consistent with the findings of these factors ( Bum and Jeon, 2016 ; Watson et al, 2019 ; Guo et al, 2021 ). Age and monthly income per capita influence depression in the media use low-frequency group.…”

High prevalence and risk factors of dropout intention among Chinese medical postgraduates

“…Our survey demonstrated that mental health distress remained common among medical and non-medical postgraduates, even when the COVID-19 situation was improving. In this study, 36.2% of postgraduates reported moderate or higher levels of depression symptoms, which was more severe than before the COVID-19 outbreak (27%) [ 46 ] and during the pandemic (34%) in China [ 47 ]. Our results were similar to those of surveys carried out among the general population during periods without lockdowns in China [ 48–53 ], while higher than the results obtained from healthcare workers in Singapore one year after the outbreak [ 54 ].…”

Family function and life satisfaction of postgraduate medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic: the mediating role of meaning in life and depression

“…Due to the influence of multiple factors, such as individual, family and school, the psychological pressure of graduate students in colleges and universities is higher than that of the general population on the whole, and their mental health status is also worse ( Guo et al., 2021 ). For students, experience of high academic stress was associated with low life satisfaction ( Moksnes et al., 2019 )coupled with the fact that medical education itself is a highly stressful process ( Iftikhar et al., 2019 ), which can reduce medical students’ life satisfaction ( Wang et al., 2019 ).…”