Association between healthy lifestyle choices and mental health among students: a cross sectional study
Abstract
The prevalence of mental health problems among college students, both domestically and internationally, has emerged as a significant public health concern. College students are in a period of transition to independent living. Adopting a healthy lifestyle can have advantageous effects on their overall well-being. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the impact of healthy lifestyle choices on mental health problems among college students in China. We conducted a cross-sectional online survey of college students from 2021 to 2023 at a university in Wuhan (N = 1826) using the cluster sampling method. We employed Chi-square tests and binary logistic regression to evaluate the association between healthy lifestyle choices and mental health and identify other influencing factors. A total of 969 (53.1%) students met standard criteria for poor mental health. Multiple analysis revealed that personal characteristics including female (1.280[1.035—1.582]), obesity (2.015[1.278—3.175]), general or poor health status (1.738[1.380—2.188]; 4.265[1.125—16.165]), occasionally attending health knowledge lectures or paying attention to health books and information (1.376[1.055—1.795]), healthy lifestyle choices including occasionally or seldom eating breakfast (1.393[1.105—1.757]; 1.825[1.287—2.587]), occasionally or seldom getting enough sleep (2.800[2.179—3.597]; 3.544[2.209—5.685]), a poor or very poor irregular schedule (1.792[1.222—2.628]; 3.619[1.380—9.486]), seldom or no physical…
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