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September 14, 2007

Depression Affects Health More Than Diabetes and More

Depression may have major impact on overall health, research suggests. WebMD (9/7, Boyles) reported on a Study in the September 8 issue of the Lancet which found that "Depression has a greater impact on overall health than arthritis, diabetes, angina, and asthma, but it all too often goes unrecognized and untreated." Somnath Chatterji, M.D., of the World Health Organization (WHO), and colleagues, "found depression to be a greater predictor of poor health in patients with these chronic conditions than having one or more chronic medical conditions without depression." The researchers based their work "on interviews with almost 250,000 people living in 60 countries."

According to BBC News (9/7), "After taking into account factors such as poverty and other health conditions, the researchers found that depression had the largest effect on worsening health." And, "people with depression who also had one or more chronic diseases had the worst health scores of all the diseases looked at or combinations of diseases."

Britain's Guardian Unlimited (9/7, Jha) noted in this context: "Depression was the fourth leading cause of 'disease burden' in 2000, a measure of the number of years of full health lost due to an illness." However, "projections by scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health suggest that, by 2020, depression will rise to become second only to heart disease in terms of disease burden."

Other links including information about this include The AFP (9/7), The AAP (9/7), and Britain's Daily Mail (9/7, Hope), which quotes Dr. Chatterji as saying, "This study reinforces the importance of recognizing and treating depression as part of chronic illness because it's a much more effective way to improve people's health than just dealing with chronic physical illness." Dr. Chatterji added, "Treatment of mental illness is a necessity, not a luxury."

According to the The AFP (9/7), WHO researchers "called on doctors around the world to be more alert in the diagnosis and treatment of the condition, noting that it is fairly easy to recognize and treat."

Posted by admin at September 14, 2007 10:26 PM