3.4 The prevalence of depression among adults in the UAE
Our study revealed a 63% prevalence of depression among the participants. Specifically, individuals within the age range of 18 to 25 years exhibited a notably greater prevalence of depression, at 69.2% (n=108), than did older individuals (p= 0.003, Table 1 ). Moreover, 74.6% of participants with low household incomes (<20,000 Dhs) experienced depression, whereas 53.9% and 53.7% of participants with higher incomes experienced depression for the 21-50 k Dhs and >50 k Dhs, respectively (p=0.003,Table 1 ). We next investigated the awareness and openness of mental health in our studied population by asking related questions. A total of 78.21% of our study participants were unaware of any hotlines in the UAE that they could contact if they were feeling down. More than half (63.19%) of our participants felt uncomfortable talking about their mental illness/es, while 36.81% felt comfortable talking about this subject to their loved ones. According to the bivariate analysis, students (69.5%) and those who were unemployed before COVID-19 (62.5%) had a high prevalence of depression (p= 0.140, Table 1 ).
The most reported symptoms among depressed adults were feeling not good enough (96 out of 162), being sad (95), having trouble keeping their mind on what they were doing (91), feeling lonely (91), and feeling hopelessness (85) and restless sleep (75), as shown in Figure 3 .