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Screening for depression in medical patients: Is the focus too narrow?
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Screening for depression in medical patients: Is the focus too narrow?

Mark Zimmerman, Jennifer D. Lish, Neil J. Farber, Jon Hartung, David Lush, Mary Ann Kuzma and Gary Plescia
General hospital psychiatry, v 16(6), pp 388-396
1994
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0163-8343(94)90114-7
PMID: 7843575
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel

Abstract

There is growing consensus that depression is a major public health problem causing significant psychosocial morbidity and mortality which should be addressed by casefinding efforts in primary care settings. A large amount of literature has examined the ability of self-report questionnaires to detect depression in medical patients and the results have been encouraging. However, studies of general population and psychiatric patient samples indicate that depression is frequently comorbid with other psychiatric disorders, and that psychiatric disorders other than depression are also associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Consequently, we believe that psychiatric screening in primary care should be broad based. We administered a newly developed, multidimensional questionnaire (the SCREENER), that simultaneously screens for a range of DSM-III-R psychiatric disorders, to 508 medical outpatients attending a VA general medical clinic. Compared with nondepressed cases, the depressed patients significantly more often reported all of the nondepressive symptoms. Nine of the ten nondepressive disorders screened for by the SCREENER were significantly more frequent in the depressed group. Most patients who screened positive for depression also screened positive for at least one nondepressive disorder. Compared with patients who only screened positive for depression, those who screened positive for both depression and a nondepressive disorder rated their physical and emotional health more poorly and made more visits to the doctor. Compared with patients who did not screen positive for any disorder, those who only screened positive for a nondepressive disorder rated their physical and emotional health more poorly, and more frequently had a history of mental health treatment. The implications of these findings for screening for psychiatric disorders in medical patients are discussed.

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24 citations in Web of Science
28 citations in Scopus

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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#3 Good Health and Well-Being

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Psychiatry
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