Prevalence of Psychiatric Disorders in Iran: A Systematic Review and Meta ‑analysis

The prevalence of mental disorders in Iran is rising for many reasons including the population growthand its problems, the collapse of the family foundation, the economic problems, etc. Epidemiologicalstudies of psychiatric disorders play an important role in determining the general mental health ofthe population and policy ‑making and future planning of service delivery. To identify the relevantstudies, two authors independently searched different scholarly databases including Embase,PubMed/MEDLINE, ISI/Web of Science (WOS), Scopus, Psych INFO, and Iranian databases such asMagIran, SID, IranPsych, and Irandoc from 1stJanuary 2007 up to 1stJuly 2018. The gray literature(through Google Scholar) was also mined. Studies written in English or in the Persian languagewere searched. After searching the databases and removing duplicates cases, a total of 10 studieswere selected and included in the study, which reported a total of 14 prevalence rates. There werea total of 72,262 participants, of whom 32,925 were male and 39,337 were female. The prevalenceof psychiatric disorders in studies which used screening tool was 31.03% (95% confidenceinterval: 25.99 –36.07). The prevalence was 25.42% in studies which used clinical interviews(95% CI: 15.96 –34.88). There is an undeniable fact that the prevalence of mental disorders in Iranhas been increasing, and this could be a warning to policy ‑makers and health system managers.Hence, it is necessary to pay attention to this issue to ...
Source: International Journal of Preventive Medicine - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research