The Thematic Structure of Papers on Depression Treatment in PubMed from 2005 to 2014

Due to the high prevalence of depression and the considerable pressure it puts on individuals, society and healthcare system, it is essential to conduct sufficient research to help with decision making in prevention, treatment and control of this condition. To assist with research planning and setting priorities, this paper aimed to identify the thematic structure of papers related to depression treatment.
This was an applied research study which used Scientometrics approach. To obtain data, the keyword “Depression” was searched as a mesh descriptor with the subdivision “Therapy” in PubMed database for the period of 2005 to 2014. The data were analyzed using co-word and clustering methods with the help of Excel and SPSS software packages.
The growth of scientific production in this field appeared to have been balanced throughout the ten-year period examined in the study. The most active research areas for the two five year periods (2005-2009 and 2010-2014) were drug therapy, psychology, and medication adherence. Two hierarchical graphs of descriptors for each five-year period were prepared both of which were composed of 12 clusters with 34 common descriptors.
The findings based on the inclusion index showed that only 20 percent of topics in the second five-year period of the study were novel. Therefore, it could be concluded that research areas that were related with each other in previous years will probably co-occur with other topics in the future might disappear. In every discipline, some topics are considered to be fundamental and research works are being carried out on them almost every year.