key: cord-0682410-384xosqf
authors: Hernández, Ronald M.; Saavedra-López, Miguel A.; Calle-Ramírez, Xiomara M.
title: Latin American authors in the scientific production on depression in times of COVID-19
date: 2021-09-09
journal: Asian J Psychiatr
DOI: 10.1016/j.ajp.2021.102856
sha: 2bb9a4956528e34f7c2c6854aa2d0d382d1fc9a5
doc_id: 682410
cord_uid: 384xosqf

nan

To the Editor: We have read with great interest the study on "Reducing the stigma of mental health disorders with a focus on low-and middle-income countries". This study states that mental health disorders are a growing public health challenge and affect mostly low and middle income countries (Javed et al., 2021) . In Latin America, social inequalities could increase during the COVID − 19 pandemic and consequently, people's mental health (Angulo, 2020) . There is little information about the psychological impact of COVID − 19 in the world and even less in Latin America. Therefore, it is important to know studies carried out about it (Alonzo et al., 2021) .

Mental health disorders, such as anxiety and depression, have increased during the pandemic (Wang et al., 2020; Vitagliano et al., 2021) . Depression is considered the most prevalent mental health disorder in the population. However, it is more documented in high-income countries, and there is little information about it in Latin America. (Errázuriz and Crisostomo, 2021) . For that reason, it is essential that mental health professionals develop research and implement intervention programs on this problem that increasingly afflicts people.

A retrospective study was conducted, reviewing articles on depression during COVID-19 published and indexed in the Scopus database. Their authors have been affiliated with Latin American institutions from January 2020 to June 2021, considering the following fields Article Title, Abstract, Keywords, using the following search terms: "depression" OR "depressions" OR "depressed" OR "despondent" OR "gloomy" OR "depressive" and their relationship with the terms "2019-nCoV" OR "SARS-CoV-2 ′′ OR "2019 novel coronavirus" OR "COVID-19 ′′ OR "Coronavirus disease 2019 ′′ . A total of 452 articles were found and their authors are affiliated with Latin American institutions, and in the analysis, 05 types of publishable documents were included, highlighting: articles (72.12%); reviews (13.94%); letters to the editor (8.63%); editorials (3.10%) and notes (2.21%).

Latin American scientific production increased in the last year by 18.58%. Brazil is the country with the most published scientific research papers on depression, representing 44.91% of the Latin American production, followed by Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Peru and Chile, countries that have more than 30 publications each. There are five Latin American countries (Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Bolivia and Guatemala) that have at least one publication (see Table 1 ).

COVID-19 has generated a global panic due to its dangerousness in different levels and sectors of the world population and its presence is an important factor to consider in the increase of mental health problems. Asian Journal of Psychiatry, during the last year has become one of the main disseminators of research related to mental health and COVID-19, significantly focused on contributions from Asian countries (Tandon, 2021) ; however, even in Latin America there are inequalities with respect to scientific research papers on depression in times of COVID − 19. There are little research on it in most Latin American countries. In addition, Brazil represents almost half of the studies in Latin America. It is essential that institutions in Latin American countries can promote more research on depression and can implement strategies to mitigate the adverse effects of the COVID − 19 pandemic, thus facilitating the implementation of state strategies. 

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