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The Health and Productivity Burden of Depression in South Korea

  • Original Research Article
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Abstract

Objectives

Major depression in South Korea, which remains under-diagnosed and under-treated, increases the risk of premature death, and reduces quality of life and work productivity. The aim of this study was to quantify the depression-related health and productivity loss in South Korea in terms of life-years lost and productivity-adjusted life-years (PALYs) lost.

Method

Age and sex-specific life table models simulated follow-up of South Koreans with depression aged 15 to 54 years, until 55 years. Depression was defined as major depression. Inputs were drawn from national datasets and published sources. Models were constructed for the cohort with depression and repeated assuming they had no depression. Differences in total deaths, years of life, and PALYs represented the impact of depression. PALYs were ascribed a financial value equivalent to total gross domestic product (GDP) divided by the number of equivalent full-time workers (KRW81,507,146 or USD74,748). All outcomes were discounted by 3% per annum.

Results

In 2019, there were more than 500,000 people aged 15–54 years with major depression in South Korea. We predicted that until this cohort reached age 55 years, and assuming 22.2% of people with depression are treated, depression led to 12,000 excess deaths, more than 55,000 discounted years of life lost and 1.6 million discounted PALYs lost, equating to KRW133 trillion (USD122 billion) in lost GDP. Applying treatment-related response and remission rates of 11.8% and 42.1%, respectively, and a non-response/non-remission rate of 46.1%, increased the total number of PALYs lost by almost 6.0%.

Conclusions

Our study highlights the considerable productivity loss attributable to depression among South Koreans over their working lifetime. Better prevention and treatment of depression is needed for long-term economic gains.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

    Ella Zomer, Danny Liew & Zanfina Ademi

  2. Department of Health Sciences, College of Natural Science, Dongduk Women’s University, Yeji #406, Hwarang-ro 13-gil, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, 02748, South Korea

    YongJoo Rhee

  3. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, Northwestern University–Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA

    YongJoo Rhee

Authors
  1. Ella Zomer
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  3. Danny Liew
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  4. Zanfina Ademi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to YongJoo Rhee.

Ethics declarations

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Conflict of interest

EZ reports grants from Amgen, AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Shire; outside the submitted work. DL reports grants from Abbvie, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer and Sanofi; and past participation in advisory boards and/or receipt of honoraria from Abbvie, Amgen, Astellas, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Edwards Lifesciences, Novartis, Pfizer, Sanofi and Shire. All other authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

Ethics approval

This research employed published and publicly available data only, and therefore ethics approval was not needed.

Consent to participate

Individual participants were not included in this study as only published and publicly available data were employed, and therefore consent was not needed.

Consent for publication

Individual participants were not included in this study, and therefore consent for publication was not needed.

Availability of data and material

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].

Code availability

The codes generated during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Author contributions

EZ, YR, DL, and ZA contributed to the conception or design of the work. EZ and YR contributed to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work. EZ and YR drafted the manuscript. All critically revised the manuscript. All gave final approval of the version to be published and agree to be accountable for all aspects of work ensuring integrity and accuracy.

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Zomer, E., Rhee, Y., Liew, D. et al. The Health and Productivity Burden of Depression in South Korea. Appl Health Econ Health Policy 19, 941–951 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40258-021-00649-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40258-021-00649-1

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