Prevalence of Depression Among College-Goers in Mainland China: A Methodical Evaluation and Meta-Analysis

There are no proper statistics available to assess how much of a burden it is to them. This study was conducted to gauge the pooled prevalence and offer evidence in support of few prevention and regulation strategies. A methodical literature search was conducted with the help of the Web of Knowledge, PubMed, Chinese Web of Knowledge, Wanfang, and Chongqing VIP databases. Furthermore, articles published from 2000 to 2014, reporting about the estimated prevalence of depression among college students in mainland China, were covered as well. In this study, a meta-analysis was deployed to approximate the overall prevalence of depression among college-goers in mainland China. A total of 45 studies were conducted on 50,826 participants. The average pooled prevalence of depression was 30.39% (26.38–34.55%). Subgroup analyses showed that 29.45% (22.88–36.48%) were men and 28.65% (23.44–34.16%) were women. Furthermore, 28.10% (22.83–33.70%) were from the northern part and 32.44% (26.67–38.48%) were from the southern. The prevalence of depression was 30.45% (23.96–37.36%) for sample sizes of <500 subjects, 30.99% (25.08–37.23%) for samples with 500 to 1000 people, and 29.54% (33.32–37.33%) in case of samples with >1000 people. Publications between 2000 and 2006 showed a depression prevalence of 8.45% (22.34–35.00%), whereas 30.52% (21.30–40.61%) and 31.79% (27.31–36.45%) were the corresponding values according to publications during 2007 to 2011 and 2012 to 2014. The prevalence of depression among college students in mainland China had reached the world's epidemic level.