Background: Depression among psychiatric nurses is associated with adverse effects on their
physical and mental health, as well as on their productivity and the quality of care provided for their
patients.
Objective(s): To estimate the prevalence of depressive symptoms and to identify some of their
determinants among nurses in a mental hospital in Alexandria, Egypt.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 215 randomly selected psychiatric nurses in
Al-Maamoura Psychiatric Hospital in Alexandria. The data was collected using a predesigned
structured self-administered questionnaire along with the Arabic Version of the Beck Depression
Inventory-II (BDI-II).
Results: The age of the sampled nurses ranged from 22 to 59 years, and most of them were females
(88.8%). More than one-third (37.2%) of the nurses had depressive symptoms of variable severity,
ranging from mild (28.4%) to severe (1.8%) symptoms. “Moderate/ Severe" depressive symptoms
were estimated to be 8.8% among psychiatric nurses. Females with “Moderate/ Severe" depressive
symptoms were more than the double of the males (9.4% Vs 4.2% respectively). Logistic regression
analysis revealed two significant predictors of moderate/ severe depressive symptoms among
psychiatric nurses: few social networks (OR=9.257, 95% CI=1.991-43.051), and job title “nurse"
(OR=0.107, 95% CI=0.012-0.924).
Conclusion: Depressive symptoms of varying severity represent a mental health challenge among
psychiatric nurses. Indicated interventions addressing social support networks, psychological well-
being, and occupational factors would promote the mental health resilience of psychiatric nurses and
decrease the negative impact of depressive symptoms among them.