Prevalence of depression, quality of life and antidepressant treatment in the Danish General
Suburban Population Study
Sammanfattning
Background : The Danish General Suburban Population Study (GESUS), the objective of which
is to facilitate epidemiological and genetic research, has included the Major Depression
Inventory (MDI) and the WHO-Five Well-Being Index (WHO-5) among the medical health
questionnaires. We were thus in a position to compare the 2-week prevalence of ICD-10
depression in the period from 2010 to 2012 with our previous Danish general population study
from 2003, in which the MDI was also included. Aims : The aim of our analysis was not only
to evaluate the point prevalence of ICD-10 depression but also to describe the prevalence of
antidepressants received by the respondents in the GESUS study and the correspondence to
their subjective well-being on the WHO-5 questionnaire. Methods : To evaluate the validity
(scalability) of the MDI and the WHO-5 in the GESUS study we performed the non-parametric
Mokken analysis. The scalability of the MDI and the WHO-5 was quite acceptable. Results :
In total, 14,787 respondents were available from a response rate of 50%. The 2-week
prevalence of ICD-10 depression was 2.3%, which is rather similar to the 2.8% in our 2003
study. The rate of people receiving antidepressants increased consistently with increasing
severity of ICD-10 depression. Conclusion : This study has confi rmed that the use of the MDI
to obtain an ICD-10 depression diagnosis gives rather conservative estimates of the 2-week
prevalence of depression in the Danish general population. The prescription of antidepressants
depends on the severity of the ICD-10 depression diagnosis.