Impacts of socio-cultural environment and lifestyle factors on the psychological health of university students in Bangladesh: A longitudinal study

BACKGROUND The psychological health of university students is an issue of utmost concern worldwide. Its consequences include multifaceted outcomes from complex interactions of sociocultural, environmental, and individual lifestyle factors. This research explores the impacts of socio-cultural environment and lifestyle factors on the psychological health of university students in Dhaka, Bangladesh. METHODS A 15-month follow-up was carried out among 1140 university students from April 2016 to November 2017. Data were collected by using a pre-developed questionnaire, consisting of socio-demographic information, comprehensive lifestyle information, and psychological health information including a nine-item scale, the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) for assessing the level of depression, and a 7-item scale, the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) for assessing the level of anxiety. The collected data were…