Major depression is a commonly occurring, seriously impairing, and often recurrent mental
disorder. 1, 2 The World Health Organization (WHO) ranks major depressive disorder (MDD)
as the fourth leading cause of disability worldwide 3 and projects that by 2020 it will be the
second leading cause owing to currently unexplained increasing prevalence in recent
cohorts. 4 Although data on the prevalence and costs of MDD do not exist for most countries,
psychiatric epidemiologic surveys of the general population, students, and primary care …