This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related articles  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Psychiatry  • Depression  • Alert me on articles by topic

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

We read with great enthusiasm the article by Chen et al¹ examining the epidemiology of depression in older people in rural China. While we applaud risk factor identification, there are methodological issues we think deserve attention. With one of us having grown up in a rural village of China for 18 years, just 80 miles east of the province of this particular study, we question the role of village leaders’ face-to-face presence in the recruitment and participation of study subjects, which could raise the possibility of subsequent biased reporting from the study subjects.

Communist China has been through a multitude of changes toward modernization of major cities, but very little (if any) has changed in rural China. The village leaders' involvement raises questions regarding informed consent from study subjects, which could have suppressed their underlying unwillingness to participate, which would ensure the best interest of their welfare. Furthermore, when village . . . [Full Text of this Article]

AUTHOR INFORMATION
XinQi Dong, MD; Melissa Simon, MD, MPH; Martin Gorbien, MD; Hugh Nguyen, MD

RELATED ARTICLES

Epidemiology of Depression in a Chinese Rural Population—Reply
Ruoling Chen, Zhi Hu, Xia Qin, Li Wei, John R. M. Copeland, and Harry Hemingway
Arch Intern Med. 2006;166(8):931-932.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Depression in Older People in Rural China
Ruoling Chen, Li Wei, Zhi Hu, Xia Qin, John R. M. Copeland, and Harry Hemingway
Arch Intern Med. 2005;165(17):2019-2025.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT