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The purpose of this paper is to assess and compare the knowledge and help-seeking behaviors toward depression among pharmacy students and non-pharmacy students.

The study was a cross-sectional descriptive survey and was carried out among undergraduate students of the oldest and largest university in Eastern Nigeria, the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Open-ended questions were used to assess the participants’ recognition of depression and their preferred source of help for a vignette character. The open-ended responses were categorized based on the similarity of thematic content and presented as frequencies/percentages.

A total of 118 out of the 200 pharmacy students sampled responded (59 percent) and 270 students out of the 300 non-pharmacy students surveyed responded (90 percent). A significantly higher proportion of pharmacy students correctly labeled the vignette as depression (61.9 percent) compared to non-pharmacy students (39.6 percent) (χ²=16.57, p=<0.001). Psychologists were the most recommended source of help by both groups of students surveyed. A statistically significant greater proportion of pharmacy students recommended psychiatrists compared to non-pharmacy students (χ²=3.79, p=0.044). There was a significant association between academic level of study and ability to correctly label the vignette among pharmacy and non-pharmacy students [(χ²=18.08, p<0.001), (χ²=10.35, p=0.016)], respectively.

This is the first time the depression literacy of pharmacy students has been surveyed in an African country. The findings from this study are interesting in the context of current efforts to decrease the enormous treatment gap for depression by improving its recognition in community pharmacy settings.