Prevalence of recognised and unrecognised depression among medical and surgical patients in a tertiary care hospital

Objective: to observe the prevalence of recognised and unrecognised depression among in-patients. methods: the cross-sectional study was conducted from june 2012 to may 2013 at a tertiary care hospital in karachi,and comprised patients admitted in the medicine and surgical departments at the time. patients with known history of depression or on anti-depressants or on anti-psychotics,or with suicidal attempt were excluded. the prevalence of unrecognised depression was then perceived using patient health qurstionnaire-9. statistical analysis was performed using spss 20. results: of the 1180 patients,432(36.6%) either had history of depression or on were on anti-depressants. the study sample,as such,comprised 748(65%),and of them 399(53%) were from the medicine and 349(47%) patients were from surgery department. prevalence of recognised depression was 36.6%; 48% in medical and 14% in surgical patients. unrecognised depression was 51.2%; 45.3% in medical and 53.6 in surgical patients. overall prevalence was 87.9%; 93.4% in medical and 53% in surgical patients. gender was not found to be significantly associated with depression in medical (p= 0.367) and surgical (p=0.606) patients. no depression was found in 48(12%) medical patients and 131(37.5%) surgical patients. conclusion: more than one-third of in-patients had co-morbid depression diagnoses,mostly unrecognised by their clinicians. © 2015 pakistan medical association. all rights reserved.