“…In the current study, target population consisted of patients received by the tertiary care center from the South Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Telangana, Goa, and Andhra Pradesh which have been repeatedly observed to account for high Socio-Demographic Index (SDI) of depressive disorders. [ 4 , 5 , 48 ] The higher prevalence of moderate and severe depression in our study was observed in other studies as well using DASS-21 and PHQ during COVID-19,[ 43 , 45 , 46 , 49 ] even reaching up to 62%-point prevalence among psychiatric population and 1.2% among the general population overall. Studies conducted among general population in pre-COVID times, that is, from 2009 to 2019 have also shown variable rates of severity of depression along with prevalence.…”