ASSESSMENT OF DEPRESSION AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS USING PATIENT HEALTH QUESTIONNAIRE

Objective: To determine prevalence of depression among university students in Pakistan according to patient health questionnaire. Study Design: Cross-sectional survey. Place and Duration of Study: University of Karachi, from May 2017 till Aug 2017. Methodology: Depression was assessed by using Patient Health Questionnaire. Questionnaire was distributed to 130 students of different departments. Results: Response rate of our study was 72.30%. Males were slightly more (51.10%) than females in our survey. Majority of our survey participants belonged to on-campus (59.60%) courses. Students belonging to Punjabi community were having the highest participation (35.10%) in the survey. Urdu speaking and Pathan students were next in line with higher participation (33% and 21.30% respectively). The number of the students from Anatomy department was in higher proportion (59.60%). A big majority of students belonged to moderate to severe depression categories (54.30%, 13.80% and 10.60% with moderate, moderately severe and severe depression respectively). Females were suffering more from moderate to severe depression (78.20%) than the males. Students younger than 22 years of age were suffering more from depression according to our study (92.50%). Sindhi students were all suffering from severe depression while those of Urdu speaking were in moderate to moderately severe category. Conclusion: Hence it is concluded from our survey that four out of five students are suffering from depression and it was also affected by different demographic variables as well.