The study, conducted by researchers at Boston University’s School of Public Health, found the prevalence of depression symptoms in the United States more than tripled during the pandemic. Where 8.5 percent of adults were experiencing depression symptoms before the pandemic, the rate climbed to 27.8 percent of adults by mid-April. The findings are published in the journal JAMA Network Open.
“Depression in the general population after prior large-scale traumatic events has been observed to, at most, double,” says study senior author Sandro Galea, School of Public Health dean and Robert A. Knox Professor. He cites examples such as September 11, the West Africa Ebola outbreak, and recent civil unrest in Hong Kong.
Galea’s study is the first national study in the United States to assess the change in depression prevalence before and during COVID-19 using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), the leading self-administered depression screening tool used by mental healthcare professionals.