Measures of Depression and Anxiety in Adults, in IPUMS (U.S.) National Health Interview Survey and IPUMS Global Health

Mental health conditions, such as depression and generalized anxiety disorder, are an important aspect of population health around the world. Including measures of mental health conditions in population health surveys is important for elucidating overall wellbeing. For example, a 2025 IPUMS Best Student Paper winner used data from the IPUMS-harmonized National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) to document increasingly poor self-rated health among young adults in the U.S., largely due to an increase in the prevalence of poor mental health.1 While mental health measures have long been included in U.S. health surveys such as the NHIS, the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and the UNICEF Multiple-Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) have recently incorporated measures of mental health comparable to those found in the NHIS.

This blog post will identify new opportunities for the comparative study of mental health by highlighting some of the widely available measures of depression and anxiety in the U.S. NHIS and in international population health data sources available from IPUMS.

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