To explore the categories of depression among college students and their influencing factors.

A cluster convenience sampling method was employed, utilizing a depression scale and an online social exclusion questionnaire to conduct a longitudinal study over four months at two time points, involving 2 000 college students from seven universities across Jiangsu, Henan, Fujian, Gansu, Liaoning, Heilongjiang provinces, and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Latent transition analysis was used to investigate the latent categories of depression among college students and the probabilities of transitions between these categories.

The overall incidence of depression among college students showed a declining trend. College students’ depression can be classified into two latent categories: low depression symptom group and high depression symptom group. The high depression symptom group exhibited the strongest stability, with a probability of maintaining the original latent state at 92.4%. The probability of transition from the low depression symptom group to the high depression symptom group was 52.7%, while the probability of transition from the high depression symptom group to the low depression symptom group was 7.6%. Gender (OR=0.73, 95%CI: 0.57-0.93), age (OR=0.88, 95%CI: 0.79-0.98), and online social exclusion (OR=1.94, 95%CI: 1.56-2.41) were identified as significant influencing factors in college students’ depression and its category transitions.

There are two latent categories of depression among college students, which change over time and are influenced by various factors.