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

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.