ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Adolescent and Young Adult Psychiatry
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1644371
This article is part of the Research TopicYouth Mental Health, Particularly in Asian PopulationsView all 89 articles
Romantic Relationships and Adolescent Depression in China: Moderating Effects of Peer Norms
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Government, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
- 2Center for Health Policy and Management Studies, School of Government, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
- 3Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, The Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, China
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Objective: Adolescent depression is a crucial determinant of an individual's developmental trajectories and long-term health-related quality of life. Romantic relationships are widely recognized as a risk factor of adolescent depression. Peer norms, as an important source of social influence in adolescence, have the potential to moderate the effects of romantic relationships. The present study aims to examine the moderating effects of peer norms, including descriptive norms and injunctive norms, on the association between romantic relationships and adolescent depression in China.The present study used a nationally representative sample of 6718 junior high school students from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS). The ordinary least squares regression model was used to assess both the main effects of romantic relationships on adolescent depression and the moderating effects of peer norms. The bounding approach was used for sensitivity analysis.Results: Romantic relationships were positively associated with adolescent depression (β=0.290, p<.001). Descriptive norms, including class norms (β=-0.634, p=.042) and friend norms (β=-0.206, p<.001), significantly mitigate the association between romantic relationships and adolescent depression, but injunctive norms (β=0.253, p=.035) significantly exacerbate the association. The sensitivity analysis reveals that the above results are robust to the potential confounding impact of unobserved variables. Conclusion: Peer norms were found to significantly moderate the correlation between romantic relationships and adolescent depression. It is important to play the role of descriptive and injunctive peer norms in the prevention and intervention for the depression of adolescents, especially for those who are in a romantic relationship.
Keywords: adolescent depression, Mental Health, romantic relationships, Peer norms, descriptive norms, injunctive norms
Received: 10 Jun 2025; Accepted: 14 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhu, Kong and Zhou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Aiping Zhou, School of Government, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
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