Quality of information available on the internet about depression and antidepressants

• Autor(a) principal: Soares, Flávia Cardoso
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Ramos, Thales Brandi, Bokehi, Raphael Castilho, Bokehi, José Raphael, Castilho, Selma Rodrigues de
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Research, Society and Development
• Texto Completo: https://rsdjournal.org/index.php/rsd/article/view/18509
• topic: Quality; Information; Antidepressants; Depression.; Calidad; Información; Antidepresivos; Depresión.; Qualidade; Informação; Antidepressivos; Depressão.

Depression is a mental disorder characterized by persistent sadness and loss of interest in activities that are normally pleasurable, accompanied by an inability to perform daily activities for at least two weeks. The quality of information offered on the internet has been the object of evaluation in several areas, especially in health. And, in this scenario, it becomes increasingly important to investigate the quality of information that the population has access to about their health and medicines. The objective of this study was to evaluate the quality of information provided by health websites in Portuguese regarding depression and the use of medication for its treatment. This is a cross-sectional study, divided into two stages: assessment of the quality of global information on depression-related health websites and assessment of the quality of information on the use of antidepressants. 50 sites were analyzed. In assessing the quality of global information, none of the 50 sites analyzed was considered to be of high quality, 32% were classified as moderate quality, 64% as poor quality and 4% as very poor quality. In assessing the quality of information about depression, 46% were classified as very poor quality, 40% as poor quality, 6% as moderate quality and 8% as high quality. The results show a low quality of information available on the internet about antidepressants and depression, suggesting the need to make available and offer users higher quality information on the internet.