In the recent numbers of British Journal of General Practice articles were published about depression in General Practice. In The Netherlands about 80% of patients with a depression visit the GP. In The Netherlands it's estimated that in 2003 about 856.000 people in a year suffer from depression. That's 6.3% on a population of 16 million people in a year. Of these 80% of depressed visiting the GP 66% receives a treatment of which 50% solely in primary care. A recent meta-analysis of randomized studies examining psychological treatments in primary care depressed patients was published in the British Journal .....read more »

Depression as a serious debilitating illness and not a weakness. Many patients don't get adequate treatment for depression. What to do about this? “the Internet affords the opportunity to make psychosocial interventions available to large segments of the public. Interventions can be delivered programmatically and reliably, greatly extending the numbers and types of people who can be reached with services”. In recent years, Web-based approaches have been increasingly used and it has been repeatedly shown that Internet-delivered treatments may be an effective and inexpensive alternative to traditional treatments. Most of the existing Internet-based depression treatments are based on cognitive-behavioral principles, although .....read more »

According to a recent review of reviews it is concluded that while awaiting further high quality trial evidence it would seem appropriate for exercise to be recommended in combination with other treatments. This cautious conclusion should be that exercise is more effective than no treatment and that for mild to moderate depression it is efficacious and for severe depression it should be added to other treatments in the treatment program. Let's have a look at the evidence. Until the nineties of the previous century research and reviews were mainly based on non-randomized controlled trials unpublished dissertations and observational studies and their .....read more »

Medical Web 2.0 Guidance Packages about depression on Webicinia. All the necessary online information about Depression gathered and judged by Bertalan Meskó. He is a medical student about to graduate from the University of Debrecen, Medical School and Health Science Center. He is a medical blogger, a microblogger, a manager of medical projects in Wikipedia and an organizer of scientific events in Second Life. He has selcted an excellent collection of wikis, blogs, videos etc on depression. A personalized set of web 2.0 tools designed to solve the problems of physicians, health care workers and patients. The package contains all the .....read more »

Psychiatrists in the United Kingdom and The United States of America and probably also in The Netherlands hardly use scales to measure outcome when treating depressed patient. In mental health clinic or outpatient units the evaluation is typically based on unstructured interactions leading to unquantified judgment of progress. Imagine a primary physician or internist not measuring temperature, white blood cell count etc when someone has pneumonia. Or a GP not measuring blood pressure after a patient has started with anti hypertensive medication. In mental health care standardized, quantifiable outcome measures exist but hardly used. You don't have to do .....read more »

For depression several self help treatment options are available. In short mutual self help groups, cognitive behavioral therapy and problem solving therapy are the most important Mutual help groups provide limited but promising evidence that mutual help groups benefit people with three types of problems: chronic mental illness, depression/anxiety, and bereavement. Cognitive behavioral therapy is very efficient as self help treatment, its structured format makes it very suitable for self-help purposes and it can be very efficacious for the treatment of depression. Problem solving therapy (PST) is another option for self help in depression. Recently, a new, generic, PST-based intervention for multiple .....read more »

People with low self-esteem are less inclined to take measures to improve their mood as in contrast to people with high self-esteem. People with high self-esteem are more motivated to improve a sad mood. Take this recognizable striking example: Holly and Lucy, who share an apartment in Toronto, are each feeling down in the dumps after a bad day at work. To lift her spirits, Holly calls a friend to arrange a night out. She encourages Lucy to join them, pointing out that eating at their favorite restaurant and watching a new comedy movie should make Lucy feel better. Lucy knows .....read more »

These sketches were made by Klaas Koopmans (1920-2006) during his admissions as an inpatient for depression. He drew his fellow patients in psychiatric hospitals on the back of his cigar boxes and note paper. Department rules didn't permit him drawing or painting. He made these secretly. He had bipolar disorder. His last admission to a psychiatric hospital was in 1963. His drawings can now be seen in Museum Martena in Franeker, The Netherlands. I think they are very nice, a lot of emotion is simple drawings, looking very vulnerable. What do you think?Related posts: Art and Mental Illness Painters and Psychiatry Massage Therapy is .....read more »

DSM IV criteria for Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Any depressive disorder, be it recurrent depressive episode, major depressive episodes in bipolar I disorder, bipolar II disorder can have a seasonal pattern in which case the specification seasonal pattern can be applied if the following criteria apply. a. There has been a regular temporal relationship between the onset of major depressive episodes and a particular time of year (e.g. regular appearance of the major depressive episode in autumn or winter) b. Full remissions (or a change from depression to mania or hypomania) also occur at a characteristic time of year (e.g. depression disappears in .....read more »

A mutual help group is defined as a group of people sharing a similar problem, who meet regularly to exchange information and to give and receive psychological support, like Alcohol Anonymous. Traditionally, groups meet face to face, but internetbased groups have expanded rapidly in recent years. In a recently published review of 12 studies meeting strict inclusion criteria mutual help groups provide limited but promising evidence that mutual help groups benefit people with three types of problems: chronic mental illness, depression/anxiety, and bereavement. Seven of the 12 studies reported some positive changes in mental health for group members. The strongest findings come .....read more »