Abstract
Depression is projected to become the leading cause of disability and second leading contributor to the global burden of disease by the year 2020. Depression commonly has its onset in adolescence-early adulthood, affecting 6-8% of young people during that time span. Youth onset of Depression usually develops into a chronic condition with substantial morbidity and increased mortality. If untreated, depression can negatively impact the life of an adolescent and in some cases lead to suicide. Early identification and effective treatment provided in primary health care, can decrease depression related morbidity and mortality. “Identification, Diagnosis and Treatment of Adolescent Depression, A Package for Primary Health Care Providers” is an evidence-based educational program, designed to enhance the knowledge of primary health care providers to better identify, assess, diagnose and treat adolescent depression. This educational program has been field tested in Canada and is accredited as a Continuing Medical Education in Canada. The program has been translated into Spanish and culturally adapted for the Latin America context. The present article describes the process to establish a ‘Train the Trainers’ program to integrate the educational program into primary health care in Guatemala.
Highlights
Depression is a common mental disorder, ranked as the fourth leading cause of burden among all diseases
In the age group 15-44 years Depression is recognized as the cause of the second highest burden of disease, amounting to 8.6% of DALYs globally (WHO, 2001)
Depression commonly has its onset in adolescence – early adulthood, with a first peak between 15 and 19 years and often develops into a chronic condition with substantial morbidity
Summary
Depression is a common mental disorder, ranked as the fourth leading cause of burden among all diseases. Identification and access to treatment is of particular importance during adolescence, as those who go untreated often develop poor long-term outcomes, including reduced social functioning and deteriorating school performance, poor economic/ vocational/ interpersonal functioning as well as increased risk for drug and alcohol use and nicotine dependence or early mortality due to suicide or comorbid medical disorders [4,5]. The capacity of health systems to properly address this significant health problem in young people is substantively under-developed This need is evident in primary care, where the capacity to identify, diagnose and treat youth Depression using evidence based approaches has been identified as a need and a global priority, and yet provider competencies for doing so are often lacking [3,4,5].
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