Depression is a common mental disorder in teenagers and the researches have been shown that those teenagers who have been diagnosed with depression may have lower performance in learning performance, socialization and physical function. The reasons of adolescent depression may attribute to life stress and smoking behavior. Life stress and smoking behavior often begin and increase in puberty, but the relationship among life stress, smoking behavior and depressive symptoms in teenagers is still debatable. Therefore, the purpose of this research means to determine the relationship among life stress, smoking behavior and depressive symptoms in teenagers, realizing what kind of role that smoking behavior play in the relationship between life stress and depressive symptoms in teenagers, and the feasibility of using CO analyzer in relevant researches of smoking behavior in teenagers.
Methods:
Cross-sectional research design was used for this research. A purposive sampling was used to recruit 226 students in vocational school. Research tools include basic demographic data, Life experience scale of senior high student, Chinese version of Global Youth Tobacco Survey, Micro III Smokerlyzer and The Beck Depression Inventory- Second Edition.
Descriptive(Number of times, Percentage, Mean, standard deviation) and inferential (Logistic regression, Pearson’s correlation, Multiple regression with stepwise procedure, Linear regression with Bootstrapping method ,Sobel test) statistics were used to analyze the data.
Results:
The results of this research were as below: (1) Life stress in teenagers increase the risk of depressive symptoms significantly. (Exp: 1.041, p< .001) (2) The teenagers who smoke have the greater risk of having depressive symptoms. (Exp: 3.550, p< .05) (3) Subjective stress(β .154), concentration of CO(β .448), Coping behavior of stress(Leaving their fate to God β 1.254, Being Positive β -1.633, Blaming themselves β 1.203) construct the best predictive model of depression in teenagers which explain 60.5% variance of depression. (4) The objective biomarker (CO) and subjective self-report of smoking in teenagers have a significant positive relationship. (r = .595, p< .001) (5) The smoking behavior in teenagers is a partial mediator between the relationship of life stress and depressive symptoms in teenagers. (β distribution decreased from .738 to .481 when predicting depressive symptoms by controlling Life stress and Smoking behavior concurrently)
Conclusion:
The research found that Life stress, smoking behavior are the risk factors of depressive symptoms in teenagers and the smoking behavior in teenagers is a partial mediator between the relationship of life stress and depressive symptoms in teenagers. This results allow researchers have a better understanding of pertinent risk factors of depressive symptoms in teenagers and realize the role of smoking behavior between the relationship of life stress and depressive symptoms in teenagers.