Epidemiology of depression in Croatia

Objective: This paper presents the epidemiology of depression in Croatia and emphasizes its public health importance to show what has been done so far in Croatia in terms of detecting mental health disorders, and to encourage a discussion on the involvement and mutual co-operation of all professions that can act as early as possible to detect, prevent, and treat this mental entity. Materials and Methods: Data on the number of depressed people were collected from the epidemiological data base of the Croatian Institute for Public Health and from scientific publications. Results and Conclusion: Concerning depression and anti-depressant drugs, Croatia consumes up to 160 million kuna a year, and their use has risen by twenty percent in the last five years. According to the data of the Croatian Institute of Public Health, mental disorders are the second most common cause of hospitalization between 20-59 years (12.4%), immediately behind the newborn (14.1%). Data collected in the European Health Survey 2014-2015 tell us that 10.3% of the population of the Republic of Croatia has mild to moderate symptoms of depression, and 1.2% of the population has moderately severe to severe depression symptoms. Depression certainly takes a high place on the rank of public health priorities, a comprehensive approach would certainly help its early detection and prevention of the consequences it carries.