Bidirectional associations between dietary diversity and depressive symptoms in Chinese adult women: A retrospective cohort study

This study aimed to examine the bidirectional associations between dietary diversity and clinical depressive symptoms in adult women, and influencing factors of clinical depressive symptoms. This longitudinal study included a total of 22,385 participants, each of whom underwent at least two data collections. We used convenience sampling to recruit women from a health management center of a general hospital in southern China from April 2015 to December 2021. They completed an online self-reported health questionnaire, which included demographic characteristics, lifestyle information, the Dietary Diversity Scale (DDS), and the Patient Health Questionnaire-9. New-onset depressive symptoms and low dietary diversity were observed in this study among 1285 and 3223 participants, respectively. Negative associations were observed between baseline low dietary diversity and new-onset depressive symptoms (P