Study Design
This study is a convenience sampling, single-center, cohort study. The adolescent female subjects between the ages of 10 and 16 who were diagnosed with depressive disorder according to the International Classification of Diseases 10 (ICD 10) were eligible for this study.
Study Setting
The Seventh People's Hospital of Hangzhou (Mental Health Center of Zhejiang University School of Medicine) is a tertiary A-level psychiatric hospital. It is a teaching hospital of Zhejiang University and Anhui Medical University, with 1,100 beds. Among them, the Pediatric and Adolescent Psychiatry Department is the only ward in Zhejiang Province with a child psychiatric inpatient department. The service scope covers the entire Zhejiang and extends to Anhui, Jiangsu, Jiangxi and other provinces (the total adolescent population exceeds 10 million). The number of outpatient visits is over 30000 each year, of which adolescent depression patients account for 20-25%. The department has 9 doctors and 15 nurses.
It was found in outpatient clinics that compared with male, female adolescent depression patients who went to the clinic for the first time were more likely to have suicidal ideas and self-harm and suicidal behaviors. According to related literature, testosterone level is closely related to impulsive behavior; therefore, this study intends to explore the association between suicidal ideation and testosterone level in such patient population.
Measures
The primary outcome is the incidence of suicidal ideation, which is based on the Beck scale for suicide ideation (BSS) [29] and the non-suicidal self-injury behavior rating questionnaire [30]. A scale was compiled to assess the patients' suicidal conception, NSSI and suicide attempt within one week.
This study used the “General Situation Questionnaire” to investigate the general information and self-harm and suicide of the research objects. Items include age, diagnosis, whether it is an only child, whether the parents are divorced, family history of mental disorders, and menstrual cycle.
The revised version of the Symptom Self-rating Scale (Symptom Checklist 90, SCL-90) [31] was used to assess the clinical symptoms of patients. The scale includes 10 factors: somatization, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, terror, paranoia, psychosis, and others (factors that reflect sleep and diet). A 5-point scale of 1 to 5 is used. If the total score exceeds 160 points, or any factor score exceeds 2, the individual is likely to have mental health problems in this sub-section.
The level of testosterone was determined by the blood sample. Five mL of early morning venous blood from the patients on the 3rd to 5th day of the menstrual cycle (if not yet menarche, there is no requirement for this time), the patients will collect blood samples around 6:00 am and used SIEMENS (ADVIA Centaru XP) to evaluate the testosterone level. The test kit (direct chemiluminescence method) measures the serum level of testosterone (sensitivity range: 0.35-52.1nmol/L). The level of testosterone was adjusted by age, and the normal range is 0.5-2.6nmol/L.
Study participants
This study collected the first untreated adolescent female patients with depression who were hospitalized in the Seventh People's Hospital of Hangzhou from January 2018 to December 2019. Enrollment criteria: 1. Female; 2. Between the ages of 10-16 years [32]; 3. After admission, a senior attending physician and an associate chief physician performed regular psychiatric examination, in line with ICD-10 Diagnostic criteria for depression. 4. The initial depression occurred without antipsychotic medication. Exclusion criteria: 1. Suffered from polycystic ovary syndrome, abnormal thyroid function, adrenal disease, pituitary tumor or other major physical diseases; 2. Neurodevelopmental Disorders, Autism Spectrum Disorder, and Asperger Syndrome; 3. With impulse control disorder such as concomitant conduct disorder, hyperactivity disorder; 4. Combined substance abuse of alcohol, tobacco, drugs; 5. Pre-existed psychotherapy.
This study was reviewed and approved by the ethics committee of the Mental Health Center of Zhejiang University School of Medicine (IRB number:hzqy_2018_003). All subjects and their legal guardians gave informed consent to this study. Informed consent forms were obtained.
Statistical analysis
Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) guidelines were implemented in this study. Demographics, admission characteristics, and the SCL-90 results are described using medians and interquartile ranges for continuous variables and frequencies (%) for categorical variables. To evaluate the risk factors associated with the probability of having suicidal ideation within one week, we used multivariate logistic regression to model the suicidal ideation [33], adjusting for the continuous level of testosterone (nmol/L), age, family history of depression, and psychosis components in SCL-90. The adjusted odds ratios were reported. Furthermore, the secondary endpoints NSSI and suicide attempt were both analyzed using multivariate logistic regression, adjusting for the same covariates as listed above. The dependent variables are the self-reported incidence of the NSSI and suicide attempt.
Prior to modeling, redundancy analyses [33] were performed using an adjusted R2 cutoff of 0.6 and covariates were reduced based on the least rank in the list of available covariates. Level of statistical significance is 5%. All tests are two-sided. 95% confidence intervals will be reported along with all effect estimates. R software version 3.6.4 (www.r-project.org) and above were used for all the analyses.