Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To describe the temporal evolution of common mental disorders among individuals aged 20 or over living in the urban area of São Paulo city. METHODS: Population-based serial cross-sectional panel studies with data from the 2003, 2008 and 2015 editions of the São Paulo City Health Survey. Presence of common mental disorders was measured using the Self-Reporting Questionnaire-20. We used Poisson regression to estimate crude and adjusted prevalence ratios (PR) and 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) to verify differences in the prevalence of common mental disorders between years. RESULTS: The total number of participants in this investigation was 1,565 in 2003, 2,019 in 2008 and 3,169 in 2015. In the adjusted analysis, there was a reduction in the prevalence of common mental disorders between 2003 and 2015 in females aged between 20 and 59 years old (PR 0.68; 95%CI 0.56; 0.84). In the same period, there was no significant variation among male individuals aged 20 to 59 (PR 1.25; 95%CI 0.86; 1.82), nor among females aged 60 or over (PR 0.95; 95%CI 0.69; 1.32) and males aged 60 or over (PR 0.68; 95%CI 0.44; 1.07).