Use of a smartphone application to screen for depression and suicide in South Korea

Hightlights
- The results of our study showed the smartphone application may be a useful tool for screening depression and suicide.
- In this study, the depression prevalence rate based upon a CES-D cut-off score of 25 was recorded as 25.7%.
- The CES-D positive rates showed meaningful differences depending on sex, age, and past psychiatric history.
- In this study, the patients who reported a past history of schizophrenia displayed the highest SBQ-R scores.
- The OR for suicide showed 8.92 and 1.98 times higher in the depression and psychiataric group respectively than in other groups.

ObjectiveThis is a cross-sectional study using a free depression and suicide screening smartphone application, which contains the data from the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression (CES-D) and a Suicide Behaviors Questionnaire-Revised (SBQ-R).MethodThe free application was downloaded worldwide from Apple's App Store and Android Market, and the participants who downloaded the application were actively measured.ResultsThe subjects totaled 208,683 men and women. 72.6% of the subjects were females, and 81.4% of the subjects were aged between 10 and 29 years. In total, 25.7% of the participants were recorded CES-D positive, and there were differences among the groups based on sex (χ2 = 1065.82, p < 0.001), age (χ2 = 1420.75, p < 0.001), and psychiatric history (χ2 = 1502.21, p < 0.001). The highest score of CES-D, 40.69 ± 15.79 and that of SBQ-R, 13.68 ± 4.97 was reported by the participants with a history of schizophrenia. The characteristics associated with suicide were as follows: depression (OR 8.92, 95% CI: 8.71-9.13), female (OR 1.39, 95% CI: 1.36-1.43), 30-49 age group (OR 2.51, 95% CI: 2.29-2.72), 50 or older age group (OR 1.48, 95% CI: 1.35-1.61), and psychiatric history (OR 1.98, 95% CI: 1.89-2.06).ConclusionThe smartphone application may be a useful tool for screening depression and suicide.