Association between adverse mental health and an unhealthy lifestyle in rural-to-urban migrant workers in Shanghai

Background/purpose: The association between adverse mental health and unhealthy lifestyle behaviors in migrant workers remains poorly defined in Chinese rural-to-urban migrants.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted regarding health-related behaviors in 5484 migrants (51.3% males) employed in Shanghai for at least 6 months. The Chinese version of the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R) was used to assess migrant mental health status. Logistic regression was applied to determine the contribution of adverse mental health to lifestyle behaviors.

Results: Of the 5484 migrants, 21.1% had potential mental health problems and 63.1% had an unhealthy lifestyle. The three most prevalent mental disorders were obsessions-compulsions (O-C; 13.7%; 751/5484), interpersonal sensitivity (I-S; 11.0%; 603/5484), and hostility (HOS; 10.8%; 590/5484). Compared with the male participants, the female participants exhibited significantly increased mean scores for phobic anxiety (PHOB) and anxiety (ANX) (p < 0.001). Logistic regression indicated that after adjustment for potential confounding factors in both genders, an unhealthy lifestyle score was significantly associated with all nine subscales of the SCL-90-R. The male participants with psychoticism [PSY; odds ratio (OR) = 4.908, 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.474-9.735], ANX (OR = 4.022, 95% CI 2.151-7.518), or depression (DEP; OR = 3.378, 95% CI 2.079-5.487) were the most likely to have an unhealthy lifestyle. In the female participants, an unhealthy lifestyle was most associated with HOS (OR = 2.868, 95% CI 2.155-3.819), PSY (OR = 2.783, 95% CI 1.870-4.141), or DEP (OR = 2.650, 95% CI 1.960-3.582).

Conclusion: Lifestyle behaviors were significantly associated with mental health in rural-to-urban migrant workers, and these findings indicate the need to develop targeted psychological interventions to foster healthy lifestyles in migrants.