Abstract:

Background: Depression is an important global-health issue. The existence of having depression with another chronic illness has a more co-morbid state than having depression alone or having a combination of chronic illness without depression. Among patients diagnosed with cancer, clinical depression is relatively a common cause of their suffering and yet it is being overlooked most of the time.

Method: This was a cross-sectional study which took place from October, 2018 to March, 2019. A random sample of 350 cancer patients at the BMC Oncology Department enrolled. An interview method was used where the participants were asked to fill a socio-demographic questionnaire and depressive symptoms were measured using the HADS-D which had a total of 21 points. A score of greater than 7 was considered to be having depression.

Results: A total of 350 participants were enrolled in this study. There were 271 (77.4%) female patients and 79 (22.6%) male patients. The prevalence of depression was found to be 48% where 17.4% of them were found to be having mild depression and 30.6% were having moderate to severe depression.

Conclusion: There is high prevalence of depression among patients with cancer attending BMC oncology department. Interventions should be made to focus on treating the patient as a whole, managing the cancer and screening for and managing depression as well.