Depressive Disorder and Mental Health Days

Participants who responded “yes” to the question “Have you ever been told you have depressive disorder, including depression, major depression, dysthymia, or minor depression?” were considered as having depression, whereas those who responded “no” were considered as not having depression. Poor mental health days (PMHDs), which is the average number of self‐reported mentally unhealthy days in the past 30 days, is one of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's self‐reported measures of health‐related quality of life and a reliable estimate of a person's recent mental health.²⁰, ²¹ PMHDs were assessed in response to the question “Now thinking about your mental health, which includes stress, depression, and problems with emotions, for how many days during the past 30 days was your mental health not good?” and categorized as 0, 1 to 13, and 14 to 30 days.