Background: Depression and suicide in adolescents have become leading problems both from the public health and socioeconomic aspects. In this context, determining the connection between adolescent behaviour and depression, which can serve as the basis of strategies to reduce the prevalence of depression, is important. Here, we investigated the association between sexual behaviour and depression in a sample of South Korean adolescents.
Methods: Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey data from 2017 to 2019 served as the basis of this cross-sectional study. The data of 178,664 participants were analysed using chi-square tests and multivariate logistic regression.
Results: After adjusting for covariates (adjusted odds ratio: 1.71, 95% confidence interval: 1.59–1.83 in males, adjusted odds ratio: 1.47, confidence interval: 1.33–1.61 in females), the prevalence of depression was higher in participants with experience of sexual intercourse. On categorising subjects into two groups based on suicidality, subjects with sexual intercourse experience had higher odds ratios for severe depression with suicidality than milder depression.
Conclusion: In this study, we identified the relationship between sexual behaviour and the prevalence of depression; adolescents with experience of sexual intercourse were more likely to have severe depression with suicidality. Further research using prospective designs should serve as the basis of appropriate sex education policies to manage the relationship between sexual behaviour and depression.