Word: depressionitis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This is significant because depression - especially if it goes untreated - can be debilitating for the patient and his or her family. Depression also carries an enormous societal burden, leading to missed work days, loss of productivity and increases in health-care spending for co-occurring conditions like sleep problems or...
The various studies that Mitchell, Vaze and Rao reviewed used different methods to verify whether doctors had missed depression in their patients. In some of the studies, researchers went back over case records and picked out patients who appeared to have the illness. In other studies, researchers interviewed patients and...
Why? One reason is that the typical doctor visit - even in wealthy nations - is quite short, usually no longer than 15 minutes. It's hard for patients, who may already be reluctant to discuss depression, to open up about their symptoms during that brief period. The authors of the paper...
Maybe. One method might be to write diagnostic criteria for depression that are sharper than the loose catalog of symptoms used today. The current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), lists such vague symptoms as "fatigue" and "indecisiveness" as possible markers of...
A large contingent of APA specialists is currently rewriting the diagnostic manual, but the revision won't be out until at least 2012. In the meantime, most people will probably continue to use their general physician for front-line psychiatric care. That may be preferable to not seeking care at...