Review on Prevalence of depression in Iranian women with breast cancer

Background: Depression is a common psychiatric complication in women with breast cancer that effect different aspects of their life; therefore this review aims to investigate the frequency of depression in Iranian women with breast cancer.Methods: This is a review article. The author applied Google Scholar, especially Farsi databases like SID and Magiran and English databases like Scopus, PubMed, Springer, Science Direct and Web of Science. The keywords were determined as prevalence, depression, breast cancer and Iranian women in MESH; in addition to the searched papers referred to years 2000 - 2019. Finally, 34 Studies were used to write the review article from 106 Studies while 35 Studies were removed because the findings were repeated, 19 ones were deleted during abstract screening and 5 Studies during reading the full texts.Results: The findings indicate that anxiety-depressive disorder is considered as a common psychological complication for diagnosing and treating breast cancer in Iranian women. As this review indicates, the domain of moderate to severe depression in Iranian patients with breast cancer is 29%-42.8% while mild depression is 21%-57.7%. The prevalence is high, however its domain implies on different statistical communities and various applied research tools.Conclusion: Conclusion: According to high prevalence of breast cancer in Iran and its psychological side effects, especially depression, that impact on women’s lives, this review provides relatively accurate statistics for depression prevalence among Iranian women with breast cancer.Message for policymakers: The findings can be effective for providing psychological services among women with breast cancer by health policymakers, because the health of family and society is affected by women’s health.

Keywords:

depression , breast cancer , Iranian women