Fatores associados a sintomas depressivos em profissionais de saúde da atenção básica: um estudo transversal

Abstract

Background: Depression is a pathology that affects a large proportion of healthcare professionals, where the prevalence of depressive symptoms has been higher in this category. This work environment seems to create a place of permanent stress and illness. Objective: To track the presence of depressive symptoms in Primary Care health professionals. Methods: Cross-sectional, exploratory population study in 14 Family Health Units in the State of Bahia, Brazil. 162 Primary Care health professionals participated in the study, where the PHQ-9 questionnaire was used to track factors associated with depressive symptoms. Data analysis included descriptive statistics characterizing the sample and estimating the prevalence of the outcome in absolute and relative frequencies. In the bivariate analysis, the association between the outcome and the independent variables was verified, based on Prevalence Ratios (PR), 95% confidence intervals (CI) and p values using Pearson's chi-square test and Fisher's exact test. Exploratory Poisson logistic regression was conducted using the backward method whose parameter adopted in the model was p values≤0.25. The final multivariate model included variables associated with depressive symptoms that presented a p-value≤0.05. Results: The prevalence of depressive symptoms was 34.0%, with a higher occurrence among women, with a poor self-assessment of quality of life, poor self-perception of health and who did not practice physical or leisure activities, as well as among professionals who reported a noisy work environment, with an inadequate temperature, that they had suffered some type of 79 violence at work and felt personal insecurity at work. In the multivariate logistic regression model, depressive symptoms remained positively associated with self perceived health and quality of life variables and those of a work nature (violence at work and noisy work environment). Conclusion: The findings indicate the existence of depressive symptoms in Primary Health Care professionals.