Latin American authors in the scientific production on depression in times of COVID-19

Abstract

We have read with great interest the study on “Reducing the stigma of mental health disorders with a focus on low- and middle-income countries”. This study states that mental health disorders are a growing public health challenge and affect mostly low and middle income countries (Javed et al., 2021). In Latin America, social inequalities could increase during the COVID − 19 pandemic and consequently, people’s mental health (Angulo, 2020). There is little information about the psychological impact of COVID − 19 in the world and even less in Latin America. Therefore, it is important to know studies carried out about it (Alonzo et al., 2021).

Mental health disorders, such as anxiety and depression, have increased during the pandemic (Wang et al., 2020, Vitagliano et al., 2021). Depression is considered the most prevalent mental health disorder in the population. However, it is more documented in high-income countries, and there is little information about it in Latin America. (Errázuriz and Crisostomo, 2021). For that reason, it is essential that mental health professionals develop research and implement intervention programs on this problem that increasingly afflicts people.

A retrospective study was conducted, reviewing articles on depression during COVID-19 published and indexed in the Scopus database. Their authors have been affiliated with Latin American institutions from January 2020 to June 2021, considering the following fields Article Title, Abstract, Keywords, using the following search terms: "depression” OR “depressions” OR “depressed” OR “despondent” OR “gloomy” OR “depressive” and their relationship with the terms “2019-nCoV” OR “SARS-CoV-2″ OR “2019 novel coronavirus” OR “COVID-19″ OR "Coronavirus disease 2019″. A total of 452 articles were found and their authors are affiliated with Latin American institutions, and in the analysis, 05 types of publishable documents were included, highlighting: articles (72.12%); reviews (13.94%); letters to the editor (8.63%); editorials (3.10%) and notes (2.21%).