Prevalence of depression among general hospital surgical inpatients

Previous studies report a wide range of prevalence rates of depressive illness among general hospital inpatients, all higher than in a non-patient population. Several factors may have influenced on these results. Mixed study population, depression-prone subgroups and continuous shift in what is a surgical inpatient population due to day surgery treatment are examples. In the present study, 108 patients were assessed with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R Non-Patient (SCID-NP) version for current major depression (CMD) and for dysthymia. Furthermore, a patient self-rating scale for depressive symptoms and anxiety, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), was applied. CMD was diagnosed among 14/108 patients (13%). Depressive symptoms (HADS-D> or =8) were seen in 14 patients. Symptoms of anxiety (HADS-A> or =8) were seen in 12/14 CMD patients (86%). Ten of the 14 patients diagnosed as CMD (71%) did not receive any pharmacological antidepressant treatment. After excluding known depression-prone subgroups of patients representing a bias, this study showed that in a community hospital group of adult surgical patients between 18 and 65 years of age, the prevalence of depression is still somewhat higher than in the general population, but not as high as in the previous studies on general hospital patients to which we referred. Thus, this high prevalence of depression in part could be due to increased depression rates in certain population subgroups. However, this hypothesis alone is not sufficient to explain the present results fully.