ERQ Prevalence

Prevalence is the proportion of a population who have disease or disorders at a specific
point in time. Prevalence of depression refers to the proportion of population that

diagnosed depression in specified point of time. There are various factors which can affect
prevalence rate, remarkably the classification system - DSM 5 and gender bias: income
effect and reporting bias. This essay will discuss the above-mentioned two factors and their
influence on prevalence rate of depression.

DSM-5 is the classification system to diagnose patient of depression if there are >5
symptoms, to be renewed periodically. The five symptoms includes no energy ( fatigue),
thoughts of suicide, gain/lost weight, feel worthless or decrease concentration. Notably,
bereavement exclusion is a condition existed in DSM-4 stated that depression cannot be
diagnosed if the symptoms occur less than 2 weeks after a significant loss, such as a death of
a close person. However, this condition is excluded in DSM-5, which affects the prevalence
rate following the change in classification system. In specific, during Covid-19, there is an
increase in deaths globally which leads to increased people experiencing the loss of a close
person. Such significant loss is not accounted for in the new classification system – DSM-5
which in turns increases people diagnosed with depression. This is evident by a 25%
increase in prevalence of anxiety and depression worldwide which caused is stated to be
COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the change in classification system, it can be argued such
striking increase is partly due to the transition to DSM-5. This is an example of bereavement
exclusion which was now discarded from DSM-5 which creates a significant increase in
depression prevalence rate during and after Covid.
“According to Ferrari et al, it has show that 5.8% of famales are more likely to experience
depression compare to 3.8% in male.”. Various studies showed there are differences
between gender in terms of prevalence rate for depression: female has higher prevalence
rate of depression comparing to men. To explain such, Ensel’s study (1982) aims to see the
role of socioeconomical factors in determining vulnerability to depression. The participants
are men and women. A longitudinal study was done when life events, social support and
personal competence were examined in terms of their ability to explain depressive
symptomology. Through controlling the mentioned socioeconomic factors, result shows that
women had more depressed mean scores than men suggesting that observed sex
differences in depression are not simply the result of differences in income. Another
argument to explain the difference in male and female’s prevalence rate of depression is
reporting bias. This refers to the social desirability bias as one gender may be more drawn to
creating a image fitting into social stereotypes. Such bias may lower the rate to which they
come to health centers to check for depression or reduce the severeness when reporting
their depressive symptoms. Padesky & Hammen (1977) carried out a study of college
students in which the level of depressive symptoms at which women said they would seek
psychotherapy was lower than the level at which men said they would seek help. The study
refutes the statement. However, since the students were not currently suffering from those
symptoms, so the situation was only hypothetical. Moreover, since both experiments were
done long ago, there can be a problem of temporal validity of whether such results are
outdated in the nowadays socioeconomical status.
There are many factors that can affect the prevalence rate, when measuring the prevalence
we should not only take account from one perspective. The studies about “prevalence rate”
also have opposing responses/views towards the theories of what factors can influence
prevalence rate”. Reagrdless of DSM-5, since depression doesn't have objective sypmtoms,
it is difficult to correctly diagnose compared to other health issue such as cancer. The
investigation of prevalence rate of the mental illness also incentivizes further research into
the origin of depression. An example of this is the growth in technology and social media.
Here, a global trend can be observed which leads to various behavioral and psychological
changes such a higher rate of anxiety and depression – or it may be that the use of social
media has led to more people seeking help for the disorders. Chou and Edge’s study aims to
testify the correlation between whether university students think that their friends are
happier than they are and average hours they spent on social media each week. The results
showed a direct correlation between the number of hours spent on social media and one’s
belief that others have a better life than they do. The problem with this research is bi-
directional ambiguity, in which it is not certain if those with poor mental health spend more
time on Facebook, or whether Facebook leads to poor mental health. As the prevalence of
anxiety and depression in teens has risen, psychologists are searching for variables in society
that may have led to that change. Recent research has seen keen interest on social media
and technology as a causation.

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Prevalence is the proportion of a population who have disease or disorders at a specific

point in time. Prevalence of depression refers to the proportion of population that

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