Magnitude of Depression and Associated Factors among Mizan Aman Health Science Student Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Background: Depression is the most common mental disorder. It is a major cause of disability across the world. Depression can affect everyone and is not an exclusive disease. Objective: This study was designed to assess magnitude and associated factors of depression among Mizan-Aman College of health Science students from March 1-30, 2017. Methods: An institution based cross sectional quantitative study was conducted on 328 college students and the subjects were identified by simple random sampling techniques after stratified by department with proportional sample allocation. Patient Health Questionnaires-9 (PHQ-9) is an instrument used to measure magnitude of depression and its associated factors. A pre-tested structured questionnaire was used and data were edited, coded and entered using Epi data version 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 21 for analysis. Then the independent variables were identified by forward binary logistic regression. Results: The mean age of the respondents were 20.50 years (SD=3.078). The prevalence of depression was 34.1%. From those depressed; 88 (26.83%), 22 (6.71%) and 2 (0.61%) had mild, moderate and severe depression respectively. According to this study, family history of depression, interest to learn in the department and presence of other disease (dyspepsia, malaria, headache were found to be significantly associated with depression among health science students. Conclusion: The prevalence of depression in this study was relatively high. Therefore the college should provide counselling and advice for students on the independent predictors of depression.

Prevalence of depression and its associated factors among Ethiopian students: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…The included studies were published between 2015 and 2022 in which 11 studies were published after 2019 and the other remaining 6 studies were published before 2019. The primary studies included in this review were conducted in the five regions of Ethiopia; four studies were conducted in Addis Ababa, 55–58 six studies were done in Amhara, 32 59–63 four were in Oromia, 33 64–66 two were from South Nation Nationality and Peoples 67 68 and the other one study was conducted in Tigray region. 69 A total of 8798 participants were included in this review, with sample sizes ranging from 265 62 to 1040.…”