Prevalence of Stress, Anxiety and Depression among Expatriate Workers

Objective: To determine the prevalence of stress, anxiety and depression among expatriate workers. Design: Systematic randomized study. Setting: Al Razi Health Center, Ministry of Health, Kingdom of Bahrain. Method: The study period was performed during the month of December 2011. Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS) questionnaire was used. The required sample size was 384 with 95% confidence interval (CI) and 5% margin of error. All expatriate patients attending Al Razi health center were eligible to be included in the study. Possible language problems, patients too sick to participate in the study and patients on treatment for any psychiatric disorder were excluded from the study. Result: Stress was seen in 38 (9.9%) patients. Outstanding loans, being unmarried and nationalities were the independent variables that significantly contributed to stress. Seventy-eight (20.3%) expatriates reported anxiety; those with outstanding loans were significantly anxious. Fifty (13%) workers were depressed. Outstanding loans and tobacco use were the contributing factors. Conclusion: Fifty (13%) expatriates were depressed, which is lower than other similar studies conducted in the Middle East region. Our sample was non-representative and possibly small, due to which the 95% confidence interval for the variables was wide. The results of our study, therefore, cannot be generalized to the entire expatriate population in Bahrain.