National Depression Screening Day Highlights Physical Symptoms of Depression;
CEU's Available to ANA Members

Date: May 20, 2004
From: Screening for Mental Health, Inc
Contact: Katherine L. Cruise

In addition to screening the public for a range of common mood disorders, this year's National Depression Screening Day (NDSD) offers greater resources on anxiety disorders while also highlighting depression's impact on the body. NDSD, sponsored in part by American Nurses Association and held October 7, has developed this multi-faceted approach in an effort to find solutions and improve outcomes for the 54 million Americans, and their communities, that suffer from mental health disorders.

Clinicians who conduct an NDSD event have the opportunity to receive Continuing Education credits for completing a brief self-education component.

The NDSD Primary Care kit makes it easy for primary care providers to incorporate mood disorder screening into their everyday practice. This year's kit includes expanded educational materials focusing on anxiety disorders, geared toward both physicians and patients. Other new features include an expanded Clinician's Guide and more information on how to recognize the physical symptoms of depression. Each kit also includes the NDSD screening tool, a one-page questionnaire that screens for depression, bipolar, generalized anxiety disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The NDSD screening form is brief and easy to administer: it can be completed by patients in the waiting area, scored by an administrative or medical assistant and added to the patient's chart by the time he or she meets with the clinician.

NDSD has recognized the need to highlight depression's impact on the body, in part because recent studies have reported a lack of diagnosis of mood disorders in patients who rely solely on primary care physicians for treatment. Studies have also found that patients with physical illness have better outcomes if co-occurring mental health disorders are treated. In fact:

• Patients who lack coverage for mental health disorders are only 24 to 36 percent as likely to receive adequate care for depression and anxiety disorders as those who have coverage, according to a Harvard Medical School study.

• In the same study, primary care physicians were found to have treated nearly twice as many patients with depression and anxiety disorders as mental health specialists.

• The Journal of American Medical Association suggests that while more Americans are seeking help for their depression, many are not receiving the help they need. The study showed that of those who sought help for their depression from general medical providers, only 9.6% felt they received adequate treatment.

NDSD seeks to remedy these problems by supplying primary care participants with a simple and effective method for recognizing and treating patients with mood disorders.

To register for NDSD, visit www.mentalhealthscreening.org or call (781) 239-0071.

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