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 obsessionse-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) Z 4.908, 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.474-9.735], ANX (OR Z 4.022, 95% CI 2.151-7.518), or depression (DEP; OR Z 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 Z 2.868, 95% CI 2.155-3.819), PSY (OR Z 2.783, 95% CI 1.870-4.141), or DEP (OR Z 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. Copyright (C) 2016, Formosan Medical Association. Published by Elsevier Taiwan LLC.