Prevalence of Major Depression in Barcelona Primary Care Settings: A Comparative Study Between Latinos and Native Born Patients

Abstract

Introduction:

Immigration to Spain is a recent but rapidly growing fenomena. The prevalence of psychiatric disorders in the immigrants relative to natives is an inconclusive theme, given that several studies have found contradictory results.

This study presents sociodemographic characteristics and the prevalence of mood disorders (detected with MINI) of 842 adults (411 Latinos and 431 Natives), attending primary care in the greater Barcelona metropolitan area.

Results:

Most of the sample was female (n=591; 70.2%), the mean age was 34.7 (±9.8) years, range 18-65. Significant (p< 0,001) differences were found between the two groups in: scholarization, housing, work status, income and percived social network.

The prevalence of actual major depresssive disorder (MDD) was 12.7% in the total sample, with a higer prevalence in the Latinos (n=68; 16.5%) than Natives (n=39; 9.0%); p=0.001 X²=10.57.There was no difference in total prevalences of other mood disorders between the two groups. Analysis -through logistic regression- of only those patients with complete data, (n=613; 307 Latinos and 306 Natives) showed that the probability of MDD was higer in Latinos than in Native patients (OR= 2.4; 95% CI= 1.5-4.0). After adjusting for gender and all the significantly different variables, the higer risk of MDD in Latinos disappeared (OR= 1.3; 95% CI= 0.7-2.4).

Conclusions:

From these data we can conlude that the relation between immigrant status and depression is not direct but rather mediated by disadvantaged social conditions. In further similar studies social variables should be considered.