An overview of Indian research in depression

Abstract

Depression as a disorder has always been a focus of attention of researchers in India. Over the last 50-60 years, large number of studies has been published from India addressing various aspects of this commonly prevalent disorder. The various aspects studied included epidemiology, demographic and psychosocial risk factor, neurobiology, symptomatology, comorbidity, assessment and diagnosis, impact of depression, treatment related issues and prevention of depression in addition to the efficacy and tolerability of various antidepressants. Here, we review data on various aspects of depression, originating from India.

Adolescent depressive symptoms in India, Australia and USA: Exploratory Structural Equation Modelling of cross-national invariance and predictions by gender and age

“…The findings accord with previous reports of correlations between negative subjective states potentially symptomatic of depression, such as below average activation levels and low affect, and school-based stressors in Indian students in Grade 8 (40). Both stress at school and family as well as family history of mental illness have previously been identified as risk factors for depression in Indian populations (46).…”

Antidepressant drugs: evaluation of price variation

“…4 A patient with depression has symptoms like feeling of sad and depressed, lack of interest in activities, psychomotor retardation, and suicidal tendency. It affects day to day activity of the patient.…”

“…Treatment of depression consists of electroconvulsive therapy and antidepressant drugs. For public health, it is important because the patient has more suffering, and it also increase economic burden 4 and cause disability. 5 In India, the prevalence of depression found is 15.1% 5 and according to estimate by the global burden of disease in men and woman prevalence is 5.8% and 9.5% respectively.…”

Assessment of adolescent problems in tribal adolescent girls: a cross sectional study

“…11 That apart it has been observed that depression is the most common emotional, psychiatric disorder reported in most of the community-based studies. 12 Moreover in view of the morbidity, it has always been a focus of attention of researchers in India and it has also been observed that it is more common in women than men. In our study, 2% of young adolescents and 3% of older adolescents had suicidal tendency, which is lower than general adolescent population (5%).…”