A web-based system for early detection of symptom of depression

Abstract

According to the World Health Organization, depression affects about 121 million people worldwide. The Centers for Disease Control report in the USA an estimated 10% of the population will be affected by depression in a given year. We developed the patient data management system (PDMS) to determine if a web-based system can be effectively utilised for the early detection of depressive symptoms. There were 394 participants in the study, 65.5% (N = 258) were female and 34.5% (N = 136) were male. In summary, 89.9% of the population (N = 354) was not depicting any depression symptoms according to CES-D score. The frequency of positive depression screening (indicated by a CED-S score of > 16) was observed in 10.16% (N = 40) of the total population. There was a significant effect of gender on higher CES-D score at p < .05 level for the subjects in the study [F (1,392) = 11.34, p = .001].