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The prevalence of major depressive symptoms remained stable in Europe between 2013 and early 2020

Study published in The Lancet Public Health

The Lancet Public Health journal has published the results of one of the largest and most up-to-date studies worldwide to evaluate the point prevalence of clinically relevant depressive symptoms.

Researchers from several universities, research centers, and institutes in the United Kingdom, the United States, Singapore, Brazil, and Spain have carried out the study; however, this country is not among the 29 subject to analysis. Among the signatories of the article are the researchers from the Hospital del Mar Research Institute, Gemma Vilagut, and Jordi Alonso, and the professors Jorge Arias de la Torre, Antonio José Molina, and Vicente Martín, linked to the Institute of Biomedicine of the University of León ( ULE).

In the work, the authors compare the prevalence and variability of depressive symptoms in Europe between 2013 and 2020. To do this, they have used data from the European Health Survey EHIS-2 (2013-2015) and EHIS-3 (2018 -2020), obtained in surveys carried out in representative samples of the general adult population, in which 283,692 people participated in 2018-2020 (52.4% women and 47.5% men) from 29 European countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The work has been financed, among other aid, by CIBERESP (Intramural project ESP21/PI05).

Monitoring depressive symptoms in Europe

The results indicate that the prevalence of clinically relevant depressive symptoms increased marginally in Europe between the years 2013-2015 and the years 2018-2020 (including the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in 3 of the countries). The results went from 6.4% to 6.5% with significant variability between countries. It is observed that more economically developed countries tend to have a higher frequency of depressive symptoms (for example, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Sweden). The results also suggest a possible reduction in differences between countries: in general, countries that had a lower prevalence in 2013-2015 increased it in the subsequent evaluation, and those that had a higher prevalence initially decreased it (except Sweden). 

Arias de la Torre, principal investigator of the study, states that "these findings could be considered a basis for evaluating the evolution of the prevalence of clinically relevant depressive symptoms in Europe, especially as initial data to evaluate the population impact of the pandemic. Likewise, they could inform policies for developing preventive strategies for depression at both national and European levels."

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