Public Awareness and Prevalence of Depression Symptoms among Patients Attending Primary Health Care Centers in Qatar

Background: Public awareness is a key element in the management of depression, public awareness campaigns have contributed to the improvement of public knowledge attitudes, and to reduction of stigma towards depression.

Aim: The aim is to identify public awareness towards depression and to estimate prevalence of depression among participants

Methods: Descriptive cross-sectional study, this study was conducted in (West Bay Health Center, Al-Rayan Health Center and Al-Dayen Health Center) affiliated to Primary Health Care Corporation in Qatar, it included all selected patients attending three randomly chosen health centers, with total response rate representing 82 % with total sample size 316 participant conducted during from January to March 2021, self-administered validated questionnaire including basic demographic data, awareness about symptoms of depression, risk factors, attitudes, treatment and help seeking behaviors also completing the PHQ-9 screening for depression questionnaire.

Results: The general awareness about depression among participants lies within the range of 48% to 95.7%, participants attitudes towards depression revealing that good attitudes regard willing to work with depressed people (88.9%) and willing to make friends with them ( 82% ) while 39.4% agree to marry from them, participants preferences regard whom to seek advice regard depression revealing that in order psychologist (89.1%) then psychiatrist (87.8%) while family physicians (66.7%), PHQ-9 score among participants revealing average prevalence of depression reaching 19.7% at the cut point score of 10 with males reaching 17% and females 20.7%.

Conclusions: Generally, in Qatar the level of public awareness of depression among participants was acceptable and they had positive attitudes towards depressed people also there is some statistical significant awareness results related to females in comparison to males. However, further efforts must be done to build public health educational programs related to depression in order to further raise its awareness in the community.