Association between new tea drink consumption and mental health disorders among Chinese college students: an interpretable machine learning approach

Background With rapid lifestyle changes, college students in China are facing increasing risks of mental health disorders. The elevated risk is associated with multiple factors, including the accelerated pace of life, irregular sleep patterns, and frequent consumption of new tea drinks among young people. Traditional medical approaches relying on clinical experience for diagnosis and interpretation increasingly demonstrate limitations when confronted with the surge of complex data. Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 1217 college students from multiple universities across 14 provinces in China, from September 22 to October 21, 2024. Information on new tea drink consumption, psychological traits, and demographic characteristics was collected. LASSO regression was applied for feature selection, followed by the construction of five machine learning models to identify key predictors associated with mental health disorders and chronic diseases. Interpretability analysis was employed to quantify the contribution of each factor and assess the indirect effects of these factors on disease development. Results The Logistic Regression model achieved the highest accuracy, 86% for mental health disorders and 93% for chronic diseases. Interpretability analysis identified insomnia symptoms as the strongest predictor for mental health disorders. The combination of severe insomnia and frequent consumption of new tea drinks was associated with an elevated risk of mental health disorders, with a model-predicted probability of approximately 80%. Mediation analysis indicated that insomnia symptoms mediated the association between frequent new tea drink consumption and mental health disorders. Conclusions These findings highlight insomnia symptoms as key modifiable risk factors for both mental health disorders and chronic diseases among Chinese college students. Frequent consumption of new tea drinks may be indirectly associated with mental health disorders through insomnia. It is recommended that universities and public health stakeholders prioritize mental health, promote regular sleep schedules, and advocate moderate consumption of new tea drinks.