Depression and Mood Disorder Among African American and White Women

To the Editor We have critical concerns with the article by Weaver et al.¹ There were very few cases of major depressive disorder and mood disorder among focal subgroups (often <10). Misclassification of depression can thus have a disproportionate impact on estimates. Furthermore, age, education, household income, and marital status adjustment assumes there are, within the joint distributions of factors, at least some white and African American women with depression in all urbanicity subgroups. Mathematically, this is impossible, and basic positivity assumptions are not satisfied.