Depression among Iranian nurses: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Depression is one of the most commonly diagnosed mental disorders. Nurses and other hospital service providers are a group at high risk for developing depression. Thus, knowing the prevalence of depression among nurses can help the health care decision- makers to plan ad hoc prevention programs to control depression in this group. This study was conducted to quantitatively assess the prevalence of depression in nurses by performing a systematic review and meta-analysis.

ISI/Web of Science (WoS), PubMed/MEDLINE via Ovid, PsychInfo, and Embase, as well as Iranian databases such as Irandoc, SID, and Magiran were searched from January 2000 to March 2017. To calculate the pooled prevalence rate, the random effects model based on the DerSimonian-Laird approach was used. I2 and the Q tests were used to examine heterogeneity among studies. To investigate the causes and sources of heterogeneity, the impact of such variables as quality, sample size, geographic region, and criteria used to diagnose depression was analyzed performing subgroup analyses. The quality of reviewed studies was assessed according to the 22-item STROBE checklist. Sensitivity analysis was performed to investigate the stability and robustness of the obtained results. All data were analyzed using the “meta” package included in the R Software Version 3.4.0.

A total of 30 studies were retained in the current investigation. The overall prevalence of depression was 22% [95%CI 19-27] among nurses, with a high statistically significant heterogeneity (I2= 94% and Q-test= 479.87).

This rate was higher than the prevalence of depression among the general population in Iran. Presence of happy nurses with good mental state at hospitals is essential for promoting the care provided to patients.