From the Editor
For the patient sitting in front of you, depression is a weight around her shoulders, the reason she can’t enjoy her favourite activities or laugh at her partner’s jokes. Such is the patient experience.
This week, we have three selections, and all consider different aspects of this illness. In the first, we look at a paper from The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. Julie-Anne Tanner (University of Toronto) and her co-authors draw on data to estimate the economic burden of depression in Manitoba. They conclude: “Depression contributes significantly to health burden and per patient costs in Manitoba, Canada. Extrapolation of the results to the entire Canadian health-care system projects an excess of $12 billion annually in health system spending.”
Manitoba: big prairie & big burden of depression
In the second selection, we review a short JAMA paper by Dr. Mark Zimmerman (Brown University) considering depression management. He recommends the use of the PHQ-9 in screening. As for treatment, he writes: “the PHQ-9 should be administered at each visit to quantitatively measure a patient’s treatment response.”
And in the third selection, returning to the patient experience, Dr. Carrie Bernard (University of Toronto) writes in CMAJ about her journey. “I am a committed family physician, skilled researcher and respected leader at my university. And I suffer from depression. Why is that so difficult to write?”
DG
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