Occurrence of Depressive Symptoms among Nurses Working in the Family Health Program

Introduction: Depressive disorders in the general population are a matter for concern because of their increasing prevalence and high social cost. The healthcare professionals who are most susceptible to mental health problems are the ones who spend most of their time at work interacting with individuals who need help. Nurses are one such group, since they are affected directly through their exposure to and work with diseases. This constitutes a wearing and stressful process, and conscious or subconscious defense mechanisms become necessary, so that the disease and suffering of the other person do not interfere with the nurses’ own physical and mental health.

Objective: To determine the rate of occurrence of depressive symptoms among nurses working at family healthcare units in the municipality of Aracaju.

Materials and Methods: The Beck Depression Inventory was applied to a sample of 90 nurses, among whom 91.1% (82) were female and 8.9% (8) were male, to screen for depressive symptoms, and a questionnaire was drawn up by the investigators to gather sociodemographic information. Descriptive statistics and analysis were performed by means of the chi-square test and logistic regression.

Results: The prevalence of depressive symptoms among nurses was 40.9%. After adjustment using simple logistic regression, insomnia was the variable with the biggest association with the appearance of depressive symptoms [OR = 6.22], followed by use of antidepressants [OR = 4.59] and working conditions [OR = 2.88].

Conclusions: The presence of depressive symptoms in nurses working at family healthcare units was significant and was strongly associated with insomnia, thus demonstrating that there is a need to implement preventive measures regarding occurrences of depressive symptoms among these professionals.