Association between adverse childhood experiences and depression symptoms among college students

Objective To analyze the association between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and depression symptoms among college students.Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted to collect socio-demographic characteristics, ACEs, depression symptoms, sleep quality, and social support information from 22047 college students in October 2022. The binary logistic regression and GAMMA regression model were used to analyze the association of ACEs with depression symptoms among college students.Results Of 21143 individuals, 82.60% had experienced at least one type of ACEs, and 15.58% of them reported having depression symptom. Compared with those who had not experienced ACEs, the adjusted odds ratio of depression symptoms in college students who had experienced ACEs were 1.40 to 3.39(P < 0.05), depression symptom scores were significantly higher in college students who had experienced ACEs (p<0.05). The risk of depression symptoms was 2.34 times (OR=2.34, 95% CI=2.13~2.58) and 4.63 times (OR=4.63, 95% CI=4.16~5.14) higher than college students with two or three, four or more types of ACEs than those with zero or one type of ACEs, respectively. Compared to those who had suffered from zero or one type of ACEs, depression symptom scores were significantly higher than college students who had suffered from two or three (β=0.09, 95% CI=0.08~0.10), four or more types (β=0.12, 95% CI=0.11~0.14)of ACEs, respectively.Conclusion ACEs were found to be positively associated with depression symptoms among college students, and the more types of ACEs a students suffered, the greater the risk of depression symptoms.