Abstract
Background: Globally, depressive disorders are one of the most common forms of mental illness. Using data from the most recent Global Burden of Disease, Injury, and Risk Factor Study 2016 (GBD 2016), we aimed to describe the burden of disease attributable to depressive disorders in terms of prevalence and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) in South Asia countries (namely India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan).Methods: GBD 2016 used epidemiological data on depressive disorders (major depression and dysthymia) from South Asia and a Bayesian meta-regression tool (DisMod-MR 2.1) to model prevalence and DALYs of depressive disorders by age, sex, country and year. DALYs were calculated from the years lived with disability (YLDs), derived from the prevalence of depressive disorders and disability weights, obtained from a community and internet-based surveys. The analyses adjusted for comorbidity, data sources and multiple modelling, and estimates were presented with 95% uncertainty intervals (UI).ResultsIn 2016, the age-standardised prevalence of depressive disorders in South Asia was 3.9% (95% UI: 3.6-4.2%), 4.4% (95% UI: 4.4-4.8%) in Bangladesh, 3.9% (95% UI: 3.6-4.2%) in India, 3.0% (95% UI: 2.8-3.3%) in Pakistan, 4.0% (95% UI: 3.7-4.3%) in Nepal and 3.7% (95% UI: 3.4-4.1%) in Bhutan. In South Asia, depressive disorders accounted for 9.8 million DALYs (95% UI: 6.8-13.2 million) or 577.8 (95% UI: 399.9-778.9) per 100,000 population in 2016. Of these, major depressive disorders (MDD) accounted for 7.8 million DALYs (95% UI: 5.3-10.5 million). India generated the largest numbers of DALYs due to depressive disorders and MDD, followed by Bangladesh and Pakistan. DALYs due to depressive disorders were highest in females and older adults (75-79years) across all countries.Conclusion: Our findings show the substantial public health burden of depressive disorders in South Asian populations and healthcare systems. Given the scale of depressive disorders, improvement in overall population health is possible if South Asian countries prioritise the prevention and treatment of depressive disorders.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 333 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | BMC Psychiatry |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2018 |
Open Access - Access Right Statement
© The Author(s). 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Keywords
- South Asia
- depression
- mental illness