The association between green space around schools, screen time for entertainment, and adolescent depressive symptoms: a nationwide study from China

Natural green environments are beneficial to people's mental health, while too much screen time may be harmful to adolescents' mental health. However, it is not clear how green spaces and screen time affect mental health together in adolescents. MethodsA total of 22,868 adolescents were recruited from October to December 2021 in eight cities in China, through multistage cluster sampling. The Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) was used to investigate adolescents' depressive symptoms, and the Normalised Vegetation Index for the 200m, 500m and 1000m buffer zones around the school represents the green cover around the school. We used binary logistic regression to analyse the association between green space, screen time and depressive symptoms.