Prevalence of Depression among Family Medicine Residents in the South of Portugal

Abstract

Objectives: To determine the prevalence of depression and antidepressant use among Family Medicine residents in the Southern Region of Continental Portugal and to study the associations between depression and gender, age, internship year, location of the health center, and type of health care facility. Study design: Cross-sectional study. Setting: Family Health Units and Personalized Health Care Units from the south of Portugal. Participants: Family Medicine residents from the south of Portugal. Methods: Self-administered questionnaires were sent electronically to Family Medicine residents from the Southern Region of Portugal. The Beck Depression Inventory II was used to measure depression. The Mann-Whitney test, Kruskal-Wallis and Spearman correlation were used to evaluate associations of variables, with a significance level of 0,05 and 95% confidence intervals. Results: The response rate was 33%, giving a sample of 216 participants. Almost 80% of the participants were female. The average age was 30 years old. The residents were equally distributed among the four years of postgraduate training. The majority (88,9%) worked in Family Health Units and 61,1% worked in the Lisbon area. About 19% of the residents had some degree of depression: 8,9% (4,7-13,0) were classified as mild depression, 6,9% (3,2-10,6) as moderate depression and 2,9% (0,4-5,5) as severe depression. Seven percent were treated with antidepressants. Levels of depression were not related to age, gender, internship year or type of health unit. Conclusions: The study represents the first effort to quantify depression among Portuguese Family Medicine residents. It can serve as a starting point for further studies about physicians’ mental health, leading to interventions to improve their performance.