Prevalence and correlates of severe depressive symptoms among Arab, Asian, Black, Indigenous, White, and mixed-race individuals in Canada: a population-based study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background Canada's mental health crisis has worsened since the COVID-19 pandemic. Depression is particularly concerning due to its prevalence and significant effects, but racial differences in its occurrence and associated factors remain underexplored. This cross-sectional study aims to address this gap by (1) assessing the prevalence of depressive symptoms among Arab, Asian, Black, Indigenous, White, and mixed-race individuals in Canada, and (2) identifying the factors associated within these racial groups. Methods A nationally representative sample (N = 4220) was randomly selected from a Computer-Assisted Web Interviewing panel, ensuring racial diversity (45.45% White, 13.53% Black, 13.25% Indigenous, 11.30% Arab, 7.32% Asian). Multiple linear and logistic regression analyses examined the associations between racial discrimination, resilience, and depression, controlling for sociodemographic factors. Findings The prevalence of depressive and severe depressive symptoms varied significantly across racial groups: Indigenous (49.37% and 21.11%), Arab (44.23% and 17.19%), Asian (41.42% and 13.92%), Black (32.92% and 12.78%), and White (32.69% and 10.53%), χ 2 (6) = 88.41, p < 0.0001 and χ 2 (6) = 65.16, p < 0.0001. For depressive symptoms, gender differences were significant only among White (28.96% men, 35.37% women, χ 2 (1) = 8.92, p = 0.0028) and Indigenous (41.40% men, 54.14% women) participants, χ 2 (1) = 8.54, p = 0.0035 and only for Indigenous participants for severe depressive symptoms. Younger participants consistently reported higher depressive and severe depressive symptoms rates across all racial groups. Everyday racial discrimination was significantly associated with depressive symptoms among all racialized and Indigenous groups (β = 0.28–0.43, p < 0.0001). Those reporting very high levels of discrimination were 4.79–18.61 times more likely to exhibit clinically significant depressive symptoms compared to those with low discrimination (Adjusted Odds Ratio=4.79–18.61, p < 0.0001) with similar patterns for severe depressive symptoms. Resilience was negatively associated with depressive symptoms across all groups. Interpretation This study highlights the ongoing mental health crisis in Canada, particularly among racialized and Indigenous communities, which has been exacerbated by the complex racial trauma related to the experience of racial discrimination. There is a critical need for a national mental health plan that incorporates anti-racist and culturally sensitive prevention and care to ensure equitable access to mental health services. Funding This study was funded by a grant from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC – grant # 2324-HQ-000162).
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".