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 obsessions–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 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.