Mental health problems, especially anxiety and depression, during the pandemic caused by Omicron variant have aroused a great concern. The drastic change in daily routine leads to a higher level of life stress. Since postgraduate students usually have worse mental health problems, they could be vulnerable to life stress. Social support would be a protective factor against depression and anxiety, and might play a moderating role between life stress and these mental health indices.

This study is to explore the relationship between life stress and mental health, and how social support alleviates such relationship.

A set of online questionnaires, including (1) items of 11 points visual analog scale (VAS) to measure postgraduate students’ current life stress and social support, (2) Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7), and (3) Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ), was handed out to postgraduate students from several universities in Shanghai. Data of 110 postgraduate students were collected and analyzed. Pearson correlations and mediate effect tests were conducted to verify the potential relationship.

(1) Life stress was positively correlated with the level of anxiety and depression. Social support was negatively correlated with life stress and the level of anxiety and depression. (2) The interaction between social support level and life stress played a significant role in predicting anxiety level (β = –0.020, p = 0.044). The interaction between social support level and life stress also predicted the level of depression (β = –0.025, p = 0.009).

High-level social support had effectively mitigated the steep slope between the restrained life stress and mental health, which indicated that more available social support would be promising to alleviate the risk of anxiety and depression during the static management period.

Methamphetamine use disorder (MUD) is a severe public health problem, accompanying physical and psychological impairment. Depression is a common comorbidity with MUD, which is associated with poor treatment outcome. The objective of this study is to investigate the prevalence of depressive symptoms among male MUD individuals and identify potential risk factors.

A total of 483 male MUD individuals from six drug rehabilitation centers were included for analysis. The demographic information, drug use history, and clinical performances were analyzed. We conducted multiple regression analysis to identify predictive factors of depression, and examined the difference among MUD individuals with different depression severity.

89.03% of MUD individuals exhibited depressive symptoms. Length of abstinence (β = -0.006, p = 0.003) and subjective craving (β = 0.052, p < 0.001) were the leading predictive factors of depression. Drug use onset age (R² = 0.010, r = -0.102, p = 0.024) negatively associated with depression severity. Depressive symptoms also positively associated with anxiety (R² = 0.171, r = 0.413, p < 0.001), poor sleep quality (R² = 0.133, r = 0.365, p < 0.001), and impulsivity (R² = 0.012, r = 0.111, p = 0.015).

The prevalence of depressive symptoms in MUD individuals is high. Abstinence and Craving days are important predictive factors for depression severity.