Open Access

ARTICLE

Identification of Distal and Proximal Risk Factors for Suicidality among New-Generation Migrant Workers in China

Huanli Yang^1,#, Wenqian Jian^2,#, Xudong Yang^3,#, Xinyu Hu², Yunong Han², Sheng Xu², Zixin Ye², Lujun Zhu², Yawen Zheng^4,*, Yanhong Yi^5,*
1 Department of Psychiatry, The Third People’s Hospital of Huzhou, the Affiliated Hospital of Huzhou University, Huzhou, China
2 School of Mental Health, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China
3 School of Educational Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China
4 Lishui Second People’s Hospital, Wenzhou Medical University, Lishui, China
5 Department of Psychiatry, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China
* Corresponding Author: Yawen Zheng. Email: ; Yanhong Yi. Email:
# These authors contributed equally to this work

International Journal of Mental Health Promotion https://doi.org/10.32604/ijmhp.2026.085743

Received 17 May 2026; Accepted 09 September 2026; Published online 20 September 2026

Abstract

Background: New-generation migrant workers in China, defined here as those born in or after 1980, experience psychological, family, and occupational pressures. This study evaluated candidate distal and proximal predictors of past-year suicidality and developed an interpretable risk-stratification model. Methods: A cross-sectional survey of 1942 married new-generation migrant workers with children in the Yangtze River Delta region of China assessed suicidality, sociodemographic characteristics, and a range of distal and proximal factors. Participants were allocated to training (n = 1359) and validation (n = 583) sets. Candidate predictors were screened using univariable analyses and logistic least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression with 10-fold cross-validation. Predictors retained at the prespecified λ_1se were refitted using multivariable logistic regression and presented as a nomogram, while the λ_min solution served as a comparator. The validation set was used exclusively for performance evaluation. Results: Past-year suicidality was reported by 11.0% of participants. Six proximal predictors were retained: stress, depression, poor self-evaluation, low subjective well-being, marital instability, and work burnout. The model achieved an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) of 0.853 (95% CI 0.805–0.902), an area under the precision-recall curve (PR-AUC) of 0.578, and a Brier score of 0.085 in the validation set. The validation calibration intercept was −0.055 and the slope was 0.777. Discrimination was comparable to that of the less parsimonious λ_min model. Conclusions: Past-year suicidality was common among married new-generation migrant workers with children and was most strongly associated with proximal psychological and psychosocial factors. The nomogram may support preliminary identification of higher-risk groups, but it should not be interpreted causally or used for clinical decision-making without external and prospective validation.

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Keywords

Suicidality; new-generation migrant workers; psychosocial predictors; LASSO regression; developmental adaptation model

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