Tag: Zimmerman

Reading of the Week: Depression – What is the Economic Burden? The New CJP Paper; Also, Zimmerman on Scales (JAMA) and Bernard on her Illness (CMAJ)

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.”

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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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Reading of the Week: David Goldbloom on Research & Clinical Practice

 From a Contributing Editor, Colleague, and Friend of the Editor

This week’s selection is a brief paper with long implications. For all of us clinicians who turn to the peer-reviewed literature (either directly or through the filter of Reading of The Week) for guidance on how to help our patients, this paper is worth a read.

It is impossible to stay current on the treatment research results that emerge daily, and we look to those randomized controlled trials published in high-impact peer-reviewed journals for evidence of what works for people with the diagnoses that we find ourselves addressing in the office, the clinic, the ER or the inpatient unit. But who are those patients who sign consent forms to take part in these studies, and how much do they resemble the people sitting across from us?

Great clipboard but relevant to clinical work? 

– David Goldbloom, OC, MD, FRCP(C)
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