Depression

A meta-analysis of depression and risk of stroke finds a positive association. How will this information affect your practice?

Cognitive-behavioral therapy, interpersonal psychotherapy, or antidepressants can be effective treatments for major depression-despite their minimal separation from placebo/control therapies in clinical trials. This article argues that their specific efficacy has not been established.

Newly developed blood tests for schizophrenia and for depression designed to augment current diagnostic approaches have attracted increased attention at recent major scientific meetings.

Treatment resistance in bipolar disorder is clinically familiar but lacks a standard definition. Numerous evidence-based treatments exist for all phases of bipolar disorder, and these should be optimized and fully explored.

For women with metastatic or recurrent breast cancer, reductions in depression symptoms over the first year of a randomized controlled trial predicted longer survival times.

The majority of the literature focuses on prenatal and postnatal depression in mothers, and little attention has been given to the incidence of prenatal and postpartum depression in fathers.

Depression and alcoholism treatment requires the proper use of medication and psychosocial interventions, as well as a solid doctor-patient relationship and a commitment to treat both disorders.

A large-scale, systematic depression screening of adults with cardiovascular disease (CVD) conducted by Kaiser Permanente in Southern California produced some unexpected result. Even those with negative depression screens benefitted.

The evidence-based approach to bipolar depression symptoms includes treatment with lithium, conventional unimodal antidepressants, lamotrigine, or divalproex.

The statement, “It’s okay, you can try again,” is even less useful advice to a grieving mother than originally thought.

Critics have noted that meta-analysis, when misused, resembles statistical alchemy, taking the dross of individually negative studies to produce the gold of a positive pooled result.

Patients’ stories (both content and structure) contain more therapeutically useful information than merely identifying and counting symptoms.

Are there any recent sources talking about the use of buprenorphine (low dose) for people who were never drug addicts or abusers but who were diagnosed with treatment resistant depression?

For some patients with MDD, there are indeed “remembered gifts” that are appreciated on recovery from their depression. But this is not to say that MDD itself is “adaptive” during the course of the patient’s illness.

The following is a transcript of a podcast by Dr James Lake.

Since the 1980s, there have been growing concerns that chronic cholesterol depletion may actually increase noncardiovascular deaths by suicide and violence-related deaths.

Clearly, we all share the goals of respecting-not “medicalizing”-ordinary grief; as well as recognizing and treating clinically significant depression. We differ with Dr Frances in how to achieve these goals, while remaining faithful to the best available scientific data.

In his ongoing critique of the DSM-5 process, Dr Allen Frances started a brushfire recently in challenging the DSM-5 Mood Disorders Work Group proposal to remove the bereavement exclusion from the diagnostic criteria for a major depressive episode. Here’s a summary of the debate.

We can take one further step toward finding common ground in my ongoing debate with Drs Pies and Zisook.

There are very real concerns about the miners’ mental well-being. Chile’s Health Minister reported that five of the men were not eating properly and refused to be filmed. In the meantime, a team of nutritionists and psychologists have been assembled to monitor their physical and mental states.

Which antidepressants are associated with the highest rates of sexual dysfunction in patients treated for depression? This and more in this week's quiz.

My colleague Allen Frances is rightly concerned with the risk of over-calling normal grief as major depression - - that is, the risk of "false positives" - - if the DSM-IV "bereavement exclusion" is dropped in the DSM-5 while the 2-week minimum duration criterion is retained.

Before jumping the gun to a premature and potentially harmful diagnosis, why not watchfully wait a few more weeks to determine if the grief is severe and enduring enough to warrant the label of mental disorder.

In a recent study of 2 randomized groups of healthy participants, Research confirmed what many have suspected-that yoga has positive effects on mood over other physical activities.

Screening for Depression in Clinical Practice, which reviews the current body of knowledge on mental health screening in the medical setting, is a reference text written primarily for the consultation-liaison specialist, but it will be of use to the general psychiatrist and the interested primary care physician or medical specialist.