The Prevalence of Depression Among Nurses in Iran: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

  Nurses are at risk of depression at a rate twice as high as other professionals. Depression in addition to individual effects also influence quality of work and organizational performance. Surveying the prevalence of depression in nurses will help policymakers make systematic plans in this regard. Because of the importance of this issue, the current systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted to determine the prevalence of depression among nurses in Iran. All published studies concerning the prevalence of depression among nurses in Iran during the 20-year period of 1997 to 2017 were extracted and studied using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Searches were conducted for articles using the keywords “Nurses”, “Depression”, and “Iran” in the local databases of SID, Iran Medex, and Mag Iran and in the international databases of PubMed, Science Direct, CINAHL, and Google Scholar. The extracted data was analyzed using STATA software, version 11, using the random effects model. A total of 14 studies with 4062 participating nurses from different wards and hospitals were analyzed. The overall pooled estimate of depression prevalence among Iranian nurses was 26.88% (95% CI: 21.45%, 31.91%). Subgroup analysis showed that the estimated prevalence rates of depression among military nurses and public nurses were 22.38% (95% CI: 19.45%, 25.30%) and 28.12% (95% CI: 21.46%, 34.78%), respectively. The results of this meta-analysis revealed that the prevalence of depression among Iranian nurses was relatively high. Therefore, policymakers must pay more attention to planning and the prevention of depression in nurses.