Objective To estimate the prevalence of depressive symptoms and to explore the association between childhood maltreatment and depressive symptoms among middle school students in Shenzhen city.

Methods Using two-stage stratified cluster random sampling, we recruited 3 168 students from 12 middle schools in Shenzhen city and conducted a questionnaire survey among the students with Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and Depression Self-Rating Scale for Children (DSRSC) between October 2015 and January 2016. Logistic regression analysis was adopted to examine the association between childhood maltreatment and depressive symptoms．

Results Among all the students, the mean DSRSC score was 8.39 ± 6.09 and 539 (17.0%) were identified with depressive symptoms (DSRSC score ≥ 5) . Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that various forms of childhood maltreatment were correlated with depressive symptoms among the students and the form of childhood maltreatment with the strongest impact on depressive symptoms was emotional abuse (odds ratio OR = 4.13, 95% confidence interval 95% CI: 3.27 – 5.21), followed by emotional neglect (OR = 4.01, 95% CI: 3.25 – 4.96), physical abuse (OR = 2.85, 95% CI: 2.09 – 3.89), physical neglect (OR = 2.29, 95% CI: 1.86 – 2.83), and sexual abuse (OR = 1.63, 95% CI: 1.26 – 2.10), respectively.

Conclusion Both childhood maltreatment and depressive symptoms exist among middle school students in Shenzhen city , and all forms of childhood maltreatment are risk factors for depressive symptoms among the adolescents．