Community Medicine Abstracts - College of Medicine and Health ...

Project No. 73 (1995)The Prevalence of Depression and its CorrelatesStudent Authors: Khawla Sultan Al Naseri, Nadia Bin Abood Al Bloushi, Alia Moh'd AlDaheriFaculty Supervisors: Dr. M. Hossain, Dr. N. PughAbstract:Objective To estimate the prevalence of depression among female medical students,non medical and their matched control from the community using the CES-D scale.Methods The original English version was translated into Arabic and applied to threesamples (medical students, non-medical, and matched sample from the community).The instrument was applied again to a subsample to test its reliability. The SCID wasalso used in the subsample to establish the gold standard which the instrument wascompared with. Socio-Cultural questionnaire in order to explore the risk factorsassociated with depression. The functional structure of the instrument was alsoexamined and the resultant factors were again tested for their ability to discriminatebetween cases and non-cases.Results The internal consistency of the scale was found to be .71. Factor analysisrevealed three factors corresponding to cognitive aspects of depression, generaldepressive factor, and normal affective state. Moderate test retest reliability wasfound, and discriminant functional analysis revealed that the instrument was capablein differentiating between cases and non-cases in over 90% of subjects. Theprevalence of depression was found to be 11.1% in medical students, 8.6% in nonmedicalstudents, and 12.3% among non-students, which shows no significantdifferences. In addition, factors associated with depression were: self-perception ofdepression, feeling the need to contact a psychiatrist, unfavourable life events, usingsleeping pills, the response towards life events, mother loss, practicing religion, andhaving an addictive family member.Conclusion The prevalence of depression among female university students was foundto be within range reported elsewhere. Moreover, the Arabic version of the instrumentwas found to be reliable and valid.