Impact of depressive symptoms in the quality of life of basic health care service users

Abstract

This paper aims at identifying symptoms of depression in primary health care service users, assessing the association between socio-demographic characteristics and the impact of those symptoms on the quality of life. It is a transversal study with a consecutive sampling of ninety-five patients of a primary health care unit, Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and WHOQOL-Bref were used to measure depressive symptoms and quality of life, respectively. No significant association was found among socio-demographic data, depression symptoms, and quality of life. Nevertheless, forty-four patients (46%) had depression symptoms associated to a significantly worse quality of life in all areas (p < 0.001). This finding shows the importance of being aware of the presence of depression, even in primary health care service users, considering the negative impact that depression symptoms have on the quality of life.