IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/oec/elsaad/178-en.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Exploring the relationship between non-communicable diseases and depression

Author

Listed:
  • Cormac Everard
  • Sabine Vuik
  • Aliénor Lerouge
  • Michele Cecchini

Abstract

Non communicable diseases (NCDs) such as cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases are among the leading drivers of disability and death across OECD countries. NCDs frequently co-occur with depression, which can worsen NCD outcomes, lower quality of life and increase healthcare costs. It is therefore important to understand whether and to what extent NCDs increase the risk of experiencing depression. This paper finds that people living with NCDs have a 15% to 27% higher risk of experiencing depression, depending on the condition, that risk increases with the number of NCDs, and that the relationship appears to be causal. It finds that women and people in financial hardship are more likely to experience depression. The findings have important policy implications: 1) Consideration should be given to mental health and wellbeing in NCD policy, which can yield health and healthcare cost benefits. 2) Strategies to reduce NCD incidence may also reduce depression, and mental health co-benefits should be considered when developing health promotion policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Cormac Everard & Sabine Vuik & Aliénor Lerouge & Michele Cecchini, 2025. "Exploring the relationship between non-communicable diseases and depression," OECD Health Working Papers 178, OECD Publishing.
  • Handle: RePEc:oec:elsaad:178-en
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Cancer; Chronic Diseases; Chronic Respiratory Disease; Depression; Diabetes; Economics of Public Health; Epidemiology; Health Economics; Heart Disease; mental health; Mental Health; NCDs; Public Health; Public health Policy; Stroke; well-being;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods
    • C1 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General
    • C51 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Construction and Estimation
    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality
    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oec:elsaad:178-en. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eloecfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.