Depressive symptomatology among residents of the rural area of a city in Southern Brazil

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the prevalence and demographic, socioeconomic, behavioral and health factors associated with depressive symptomatology in rural residents. METHODS: This is a population-based, cross-sectional study with a representative sample of 1,453 residents aged 18 years or over of the rural area of the city of Pelotas, State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. We used the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale to evaluate depressive symptomatology, considering the cutoff point ≥ 8 points. We evaluated the association between the outcome and the independent variables using Poisson regression. RESULTS: The prevalence of depressive symptomatology was 35.4% (95%CI 31.5–39.3). After adjustment, the depressive symptomatology was higher among women (PR = 1.77, 95%CI 1.46–2.15), individuals with low education level (0–4 years of study) (PR = 1.62, 95%CI 1.22–2.16), worse socioeconomic conditions (classes D or E) (PR = 1.49, 95%CI 1.22–1.83), and with chronic diseases (PR = 1.74, 95%CI 1.24–2.45). CONCLUSIONS: The high prevalence of depressive symptomatology in rural residents indicates the relevance of depression as an important public health problem in this population. Specific attention should be aimed at the subgroups that presented the highest prevalence of symptomatology

Abstract licence: CC BY

1. 16.

   Cross-national epidemiology of DSM-IV major depressive episode · 2011

20 more references, whose wording the paper’s licence keeps private.

A person counts once a day per paper. We keep no cookie and no address: a reader is a hash that changes every day. Any month under five reads shows no number.