In light of the growing concern for the mental well-being of adolescents, this study sought to investigate the impact of team and individual sports participation within the school setting on depressive symptoms and explore the mediating role of school belonging in the relationships between team and individual sports and depressive symptoms among adolescents. We also examined gender differences in the effects of the types of sports (i.e., team and individual sports) participation on depression. A series of full structural equation models were tested with data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). Results suggest that joint team and individual sports participation had an indirect effect on reducing adolescents’ depressive symptoms through their sense of school belonging. Team sport participation was found to predict lower levels of depression both directly and indirectly through school belonging. When including all the gender variables and their interaction terms in the moderated mediation model, male students who played team sports had significantly lower scores of depression through school belonging, compared to students who played no-sports. Female students participating in individual sports reported lower levels of depression while male students participating in individual sports showed higher depression scores than males who did not participate in sports. Our findings provide important insights concerning the key role of team sport participation and school belonging in reducing the risk of depression and the types of sports and their separate effects on depression symptoms in male and female adolescents.

中文翻译：

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团队和个人运动参与、学校归属感以及青少年抑郁症的性别差异

鉴于人们对青少年心理健康的日益关注，本研究旨在调查学校环境中团队和个人体育运动参与对抑郁症状的影响，并探讨学校归属感在团队和个人关系中的中介作用。青少年的运动和抑郁症状。我们还研究了参与运动类型（即团队运动和个人运动）对抑郁症影响的性别差异。使用国家青少年至成人健康纵向研究（Add Health）的数据测试了一系列完整的结构方程模型。结果表明，联合团队和个人体育运动的参与通过学校归属感对减少青少年的抑郁症状产生间接影响。研究发现，参与团队运动可以通过学校归属感直接或间接预测抑郁程度的降低。当将所有性别变量及其交互项纳入有调节的中介模型时，与不参加体育运动的学生相比，参加团队运动的男学生因学校归属感而患抑郁症的分数显着降低。参加个人运动的女学生的抑郁程度较低，而参加个人运动的男学生的抑郁分数高于未参加运动的男学生。我们的研究结果提供了关于团队运动参与和学校归属感在降低抑郁风险中的关键作用以及运动类型及其对男性和女性青少年抑郁症状的单独影响的重要见解。