[Combining the national health survey with GES notifications to improve the depression prevalence estimation in...

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a public health problem of increasing severity in Chile. However, prevalence studies of MDD yield discordant results. Reconciling these discordances, at least in part, requires improving the estimate of MDD prevalence in Chile.

To improve the estimate of MDD prevalence in Chile, by combining data from the 2016/17 Chilean National Health Survey (ENS) with data from the mandatory notifications of users of the Explicit health guaranties (GES acronym in Spanish) program of the Ministry of Health for MDD treatment.

The 2016/17 ENS, applied a Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) module (n = 3,403), to diagnose individuals with MDD. This article presents an approach that combines the CIDI/ENS diagnoses with GES depression notifications for this period. This dataset combination was applied first to individual macro-zones, then at a national level.

The analysis with ENS 2016/17 data only, yields a prevalence of MDD in subjects 18 years or older of 6.19% (95% CI: 4.51-8.43). However, the analysis of the combined data sources yields a prevalence that increases to 6.65% (95% CI: 4.63-8.67). In terms of number of cases, this prevalence increase translates into 63,474 additional MDD cases per year.

The MDD prevalence that results from combining ENS 2016/17 and GES data is greater than the prevalence reported by the ENS 2016/17 alone. This increase in cases allows policymakers to improve budgeting and implementation of public policies concerning the prevention and treatment of MDD.