Depression and associated risk factors among hypertensive patients in primary health care centers in Dammam, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

INTRODUCTION: depression is a common mental illness and Hypertension is a chronic disease and due to the negligence depression is co-morbidity with hypertension. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of depression and its associated factor among hypertensive patients in Dammam. METHODS: it was a cross-sectional study and 342 hypertensive patients were selected from primary health care centers in Dammam, KSA. Beck Depression Inventory scale was used to determine the depression. The logistic regression analysis was used to assess the correlation between depression (dependent) and other variables. The P-value of less than 0.05 has been set to be statistically significant. RESULTS: the proportion of depression with various degrees of severity among study participants was 19.6%. After Adjustment of covariates, older age [aOR 3.33, 95% CI 1.22-9.10; p= 0.019,low income [a OR 3.19, 95% CI 1.02-9.11; p= 0.003, illiterate [aOR 3.41, 95% CI 1.09-7.65; p= 0.005], physical inactivity [aOR 2.65, 95% CI 1.21-9.65; p= 0.051], ever smoker [aOR 2.99, 95% CI 1.09-3.77; p= 0.002], long standing hypertension > 3 years [aOR 3.765, 95% CI 1.01-7.10; p= 0.049] were more likely significantly associated with depression among hypertensive patients. CONCLUSION: depression is common among hypertensive patients in our setting. The associated multiple risk factors are older age, low income (< 3000 SR), physical inactivity, long standing hypertension.