Common mental disorders in São Paulo city, 2003-2015: population-based serial cross-sectional panel studies

To describe the temporal evolution of common mental disorders among individuals aged 20 or over living in the urban area of ​​São Paulo city.

Population-based serial cross-sectional panel studies with data from the 2003, 2008 and 2015 editions of the São Paulo City Health Survey. Presence of common mental disorders was measured using the Self-Reporting Questionnaire-20. We used Poisson regression to estimate crude and adjusted prevalence ratios (PR) and 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) to verify differences in the prevalence of common mental disorders between years.

The total number of participants in this investigation was 1,565 in 2003, 2,019 in 2008 and 3,169 in 2015. In the adjusted analysis, there was a reduction in the prevalence of common mental disorders between 2003 and 2015 in females aged between 20 and 59 years old (PR 0.68; 95%CI 0.56; 0.84). In the same period, there was no significant variation among male individuals aged 20 to 59 (PR 1.25; 95%CI 0.86; 1.82), nor among females aged 60 or over (PR 0.95; 95%CI 0.69; 1.32) and males aged 60 or over (PR 0.68; 95%CI 0.44; 1.07).