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Background: Quarantines may exacerbate the presence of emotional symptoms or anxiety., Aim: To explore the relation between time spent in lockdown and development of depressive and anxiety symptoms., Material and Methods: A survey including the GAD anxiety and PHQ-9 depression scores was answered online by 1,488 subjects aged 36 ± 14 years (74% women), invited to participate through social networks. Both scores are validated for the Chilean population., Results: Most responders had a private health insurance system. Sixty seven percent had clinically significant depressive symptoms and 39% had anxiety symptoms. Spending four or more weeks of lockdown (quarantine) was associated with 1.6 times higher risk of developing depressive symptoms and 2.9 times higher risk of developing anxiety symptoms. Difficulties in access to health care increased 3.3 times the risk of developing depression. Suffering a respiratory disease increased 2.39 times the risk of developing anxiety., Conclusions: There was a direct association between depressive and anxious symptoms, and the time spent of quarantine.

Background: Depressive symptoms and personality features of patients with mood disorders are supposed to have a strong variability in cross cultural studies. The clinical profile, the outcome and the treatment response seem to be different across the world., Aim: To investigate the differences and similarities of major depressive disorders in Chile and Germany., Material and Methods: Sixty seven Chilean and German depressive inpatients, without comorbidity on axis I or II were studied. Diagnosis of depression was based on DSM IV and ICD 10 criteria for major depression. Symptomatology was assessed using the self reporting questionnaire (SRQ-20), the Symptom checklist-90-revisited (SCL 90-R), the Beck inventory for Depression (BDI), and the Hamilton scale for depression (HAM-D). Personality was assessed with the Munich Personality Scale., Results: Only the SRQ-20 shows significantly higher tendency towards depression among Chilean patients. At the personality level, Chileans exhibited higher scores in extroversion, neuroticism, esoteric and isolating tendencies., Conclusions: These results help to understand differences and similarities between depressive syndromes across cultures. They suggest that the relation between symptomatology, some personality traits and severe major depression has little variability across cultures.