Depression

About 42% of the survey respondents were categorized as having clinical depression by DSM-IVR criteria 26(Table 3). Characteristics of subjects with and without depression are given in Table 4. Depression was more frequent if the subjects were single, widowed or divorced (77.5% vs. 70.9% p-value 0.047). Subjects with depression had a slightly but significantly lower total number of trauma events overall, but the mean weighted score was higher in those with depression, suggesting that the intensity of the experiences was more important that the total number. Experiencing lack of shelter, having a near-death experience, separation from family members, and being kidnapped were the only variables significantly associated with having depression by DSM-IVR criteria (Table 2). Similarly, having a near-death experience and being kidnapped were associated with significantly higher mean depression score by student t-test. Depression was also associated with higher mean PTSD and mean total HSCL-25 scores.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
By applying DSM-IVR criteria, only 7 subjects met criteria for PTSD, and of these, all were also depressed (Table 3). The study subjects with PTSD were significantly younger than were those without PTSD (mean age 23.6 years vs. 37.6 years, p=0.0018). Experiencing rape, having near-death experiences, and being kidnapped were also significantly associated with higher mean PTSD scores. Six out of 7 subjects with PTSD were female and unemployed and 5/7 were single. Due to limitations of the sample size no further group analysis was performed.
Table 5 shows Pearson correlations for depression scores (calculated from HSCL-25) and various demographic and trauma experience scores. The number of experienced trauma events was positively associated with higher depression scores. This relationship was much stronger among males than females. The strongest correlation of depression score was with the PTSD score (r= 0.719), the total HTQ score (r=0.789), and the anxiety score (0.821). Having a near-death experience (r=0.251), being a kidnap victim of kidnap (r=0.263), and separation from family (r=0.224) had moderate associations with the depression score.