Major Depression in the Population: A Public Health Approach

This week, we will be focusing on the definition of major depression and the methods that we use for measuring its effect on populations.

This week we will be covering depression from a global public health perspective.

This week we take advantage of what we know about major depressive disorder to examine major epidemiologic research designs, including the case control design, the cohort design, and the study of diseases in time and space.

Choice 1: You are the coordinator of an international nutrition program in refugee camps, including a refugee camp in Tanzania. Most of the refugees in this camp have fled violence from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the size of the camp is increasing because of the intensification of armed violence there. The nutrition organization that you have been working for has been implementing programs to promote breastfeeding, and appropriate infant and young child feeding practices. You have been told that program staff are facing difficulties, and you decide to visit the site to see for yourself what is going on. In your meeting with some of the community health workers who are implementing the program, you hear of women living in very challenging circumstances. A group of women seems to be very tired and have lost the energy to engage with daily routines. You suspect that mental health may play a role, and decide to ask further questions and write a report about this to your organization’s headquarters. | Choice 2: A young entrepreneur from Oklahoma named Rodney Johnson created a household cleaning product made from byproducts of the corn industry. This product, called Solvit, is very good at cleaning up grease and dirt, and was more effective than many other well-known products such as Mr. Clean, Fantastik, and Lysol. Mr. Johnson started marketing the product in 1992 at stores in his native Oklahoma, and also on the World Wide Web. Twenty years later this product is the most widely used cleaning agent in North America, although it still has not been introduced in several states. In 2012 Consumer Reports magazine determined that the product contained solvents that might cause depressive disorder. It asked the Consumer Products Safety Commission to ban the product. The Institute of Medicine was asked for its advice. The IOM learned that you had taken this course and has asked you to consult on epidemiologic evidence and methods that might support the claim that Solvit produces depressive disorder.