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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Depression in primary care
— 2: General practitioners' recognition of major depression in elderly patients | | Author(s) | Daniel W O'Connor, Richard Rosewarne, Ann Bruce |
| Journal title | International Psychogeriatrics, vol 13, no 3, September 2001 |
| Pages | pp 367-374 |
| Keywords | Depression ; Screening ; General practitioners ; Diagnosis ; Australia. |
| Annotation | It is important that serious depressive illness be recognised and treated appropriately by primary care practitioners. In this study of 1,021 patients aged 70+ of 30 general practitioners (GPs) in Melbourne, Australia, results using the Canberra Interview for the Elderly indicate that GPs' ratings of depression were best predicted in descending order of importance by patients' past contact with a psychiatrist, the doctor's view that a patient did not have dementia, the number of current depressive symptoms, patients' disclosure of these symptoms, and current physical pain. GPs' assessment of patients' mood concurred with research diagnoses in 23 of 35 cases (66%) of ICD-10 mild depressive episode, and 23 of 26 cases (88%) of moderate or severe depressive episode. GPs were unaware, however, of many depressive symptoms, and often rated patients as being depressed when they were not. The use of a simple checklist of depressive symptoms would lead to a dramatic improvement in doctors' knowledge of patients' current psychiatric status. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-020215207 A |
| Classmark | ENR: 3V: QT6: LK7: 7YA |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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