MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Douglas A. Mata, M.D., M.P.H.
Anatomic and Clinical Pathology
Resident Physician, Brigham & Women’s Hospital
Clinical Fellow, Harvard Medical School
Boston, MA 02115
Marco A. Ramos, M.Phil., M.S.Ed.
History of Science and Medicine
M.D./Ph.D. Candidate, Yale School of Medicine
New Haven, CT 06511
Medical Research: What is the background for your study?
Dr. Mata: Training to be a doctor is clearly stressful, but the prevalence of depression among trainees is not well known. They may get especially depressed during their grueling years of residency, when young physicians are learning their craft by working long hours and taking care of critically ill patients. Coming up with a reliable estimate of the prevalence of depression among graduate medical trainees would help us identify causes of resident depression and begin to treat or prevent it. We thus aimed to find answers to two questions:
- First, what percentage of new doctors might be depressed?
- Second, how much has that changed over time?
Medical Research: What are the main findings?
Dr. Mata: We set out to find every study ever published on this subject. We analyzed 50 years of research on depression in resident physicians. We collected and combined data from 54 studies conducted around the world, and found that a startling 29% of physicians in training have signs of depression. We also detected a small but significant increase in the prevalence of depression over the five decades the study covered.
Mr. Ramos: Twenty-nine percent is a concrete number you can hang your hat on, so to speak. But this number alone doesn’t capture the extent of the problem. We conducted additional studies that revealed that up to 43% of residents have depressive symptoms.
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