Increasing Depressive Symptoms of Students in Turkey (Türkiye), 1990-2023: Effects of Gender, Socioeconomic Status, Anxiety, and the COVID-19 Pandemic

The prevalence and severity of depression seem to be increasing in many countries. Students can be especially vulnerable to depression, and the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to exacerbate depression severity in many countries. We wished to quantify these increases in depression severity in an emerging and developing country, for which epidemiological data were scarce. We analysed mean Beck Depression Inventory scores, as reported for 446 samples of students in Turkey (Türkiye), in journal articles and theses published between 1990 and 2023. Mean depression scores increased by 2.64 points on average during the study period, but this increase was largely restricted to women students. Mean depression scores increased by 1.85 points when the pandemic began, but this does not account for the overall increase across the study period. The difference between women and men’s scores increased when the pandemic began, but this increase was temporary. Depression’s negative correlation with socioeconomic status, on the other hand, did not change during the study period. Depression’s positive correlation with anxiety, however, did increase. These results show that students’ depression scores can vary across time, in an emerging and developing country where this had not been thoroughly studied. However, the effects of the pandemic, though measurable, may have been less severe than many of us feared.