Correspondence on population health surveys and screening tools for depressive disorders: aims and uses by Arias de la Torre et al

Arias de la Torre et al argue in ‘Population health surveys and screening tools for depressive disorders: aims and uses’ that population-based studies like the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS) are primarily intended to identify and compare vulnerable groups and factors associated with depression on a population level, not to estimate prevalence of major depressive disorders (MDD).1 We fully agree that the use of brief depression questionnaires in such studies provides meaningful data on the perceived burden by depressive symptoms.

While questionnaire sum scores can be easily analysed, reported and compared, the common practice of reporting the share of participants that score above a given threshold as prevalence2 is highly problematic. For their widely cited prevalence analysis,3 Arias de la Torre et al argue that they employed a broad definition of ‘current depressive disorders’, including MDD, dysthymia and mere occurrence of depressive symptoms…