National Depression Screening Day Research Articles

Depression Screening Targets African Americans

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Community NewsFull AccessDepression Screening Targets African AmericansEve BenderEve BenderSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:21 Nov 2003https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.38.22.0014This year October 9 isn’t just another day at Howard University Hospital. By 9 a.m., faculty and staff from the university’s psychiatry and psychology departments are seated expectantly at tables lined with literature on mood and anxiety disorders, and people soon begin to congregate at the tables, hoping to answer a nagging question for themselves: Do I have depression?Most of those who come to the screening site on National Depression Screening Day (NDSD) are African-American residents from the surrounding Washington, D.C., community. Hospital staff and students from the university also participated in the screening.Those who wish to participate in the screening are shown into Freedmen’s Hall, a museum dedicated to the history of medical education at Howard. Today, the large room doubles as a screening site where faculty and staff conduct the screenings.By the end of the day, NDSD staff will have screened 81 people for depression and assisted an additional 25 people in their quest for information on mood disorders.Christine Carrington, Ph.D., the NDSD site director at Howard University, and William Lawson, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the university’s department of psychiatry.The majority of those who are screened each year do meet criteria for depression, according to Christine Carrington, Ph.D., who is an assistant professor of psychiatry, chief psychologist at Howard University Hospital, and NDSD site director at Howard. “Depression is typically underdiagnosed in African Americans,” she told Psychiatric News.The screening project is an effort to reverse that situation, if just in the local community, she said.William Lawson, M.D., Ph.D., who is chair of Howard University’s department of psychiatry, emphasized this point. “About half of African Americans with depression never get diagnosed or treated,” he said. Furthermore, “Many are treated improperly even if they are diagnosed with depression.”Complicating matters is that anywhere from 10 percent to 25 percent of NDSD participants who are identified with depression at Howard also screen positive for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).“It is important to screen both for PTSD and depression in the African-American population,” Carrington said. These diagnoses are often overlooked in this group. “Undetected PTSD symptoms can undermine even successful depression treatment” in these cases, she added.Carrington is conducting research on the factors that contribute to the development of comorbid PTSD and depression in African Americans, she said, and has found that “early losses such as death, divorce of parents, physical or sexual abuse, neglect, or abandonment can influence the development of depression and/or PTSD.”In addition, Carrington said, witnessing or being the victim of community or domestic violence can play a role in the development of depression and PTSD.Lawson with a screening subject.Howard University has been screening D.C. residents for depression since 1991, when Screening for Mental Health Inc., a nonprofit agency based in Wellesley, Mass., launched the first NDSD.Lawson and Carrington said that in addition to identifying those who need treatment for clinical depression and other mood disorders, they refer those who screen positive to Howard’s mental health clinic or one of several community mental health centers in the area.Besides offering screening and treatment in conjunction with NDSD, Lawson said Howard University faculty and students—as well as staff of the hospital’s pastoral services—are working closely with area churches to step up efforts to identify African Americans with mental illness.It is not uncommon for African Americans with mental health problems to seek help through pastoral services, he pointed out.“We are working to educate pastors about mental illness,” Lawson added, “and to identify members of the congregation who need treatment and provide it to them.”More information about National Depression Screening Day is posted on the Web at www.mentalhealthscreening.org/depression.htm. ▪ ISSUES NewArchived

Depressed Parents Will Be Focus Of Depression Screening Day

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Community NewsFull AccessDepressed Parents Will Be Focus Of Depression Screening DayEve BenderEve BenderSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:19 Sep 2003https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.38.18.0013Screening and treatment for depression in parents is a new focal point for this year’s National Depression Screening Day (NDSD). The campaign is titled “Can a Depressed Parent be a Good Parent? You Bet!”Screening for Mental Health Inc., a nonprofit agency based in Massachusetts, has organized NDSD each year since 1991.The event is held at 6,000 screening sites throughout the United States and Canada, and its goal is to help to identify people with mood disorders, such as depression and bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder; educate the public about psychiatric illnesses; and combat the stigma surrounding them.This year’s NDSD will take place on October 9, and as part of the new campaign, a new brochure will be distributed to NDSD screening sites urging parents to seek help for depression and talk openly with their children about depression and treatment. The brochure also advises parents with depression to make sure that their children don’t blame themselves for the depression and to explain that they are seeking treatment in order to get better.The campaign and brochure are based on an intervention developed by William Beardslee, M.D., psychiatrist in chief at Children’s Hospital in Boston and the Gardner Monks professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, as described in his book, Out of the Darkened Room: When a Parent Is Depressed—Protecting the Children and Strengthening the Family.It is not uncommon, he added, for many parents with depression to be self-critical and worry that their children will be adversely affected by their depression.He suggested that parents speak openly about depression and treatment with children to increase their understanding about the illness and “build resilience in children by encouraging them to be involved in friendships and activities outside the home.”Said Douglas Jacobs, M.D., the founder and executive director of Screening for Mental Health Inc., “Our message is that by seeking treatment, parents can feel better themselves and help their whole family . . . . This will resonate with a lot of people, and NDSD has always been about finding a way to connect people with available services.”Those interested in providing screening on National Depression Screening Day must register by downloading a form at the Web site www.mentalhealthscreening.org or by calling (718) 239-0071. Registration fees are $150 for most private sites, $50 for public-sector sites, and free for primary care screening sites. ▪ ISSUES NewArchived

The 5th Annual Primary & Specialty Care Outreach National Depression Screening Day

The 5th Annual Primary & Specialty Care Outreach National Depression Screening Day

Americans More Willing To Seek Out Treatment

Americans More Willing To Seek Out Treatment

Comorbid Major Depression and Social Phobia.

Article Abstract Because this piece has no abstract, we have provided for your benefit the first 3 sentences of the full text. To call attention to the high prevalence of depressionin the community, National Depression ScreeningDay has been established. Materials are distributed toclinics and private doctors†offices to encourage the recognitionof this disorder, commonly found in the primarycare setting. The subject of this article, a 20-year-old,single white male college student, went to his primarycare physician for a routine physical examination on thisparticular day and filled out a screening form.

Treatment for depression following the 1996 National Depression Screening Day.

Characteristics of the subsequent treatment received by people who screened positive for depression in the 1996 National Depression Screening Day were investigated. A follow-up telephone survey was completed by 1,502 randomly selected participants from 2,800 sites. Of 927 people for whom additional evaluation was recommended, 602 (64.9%) obtained evaluations and 503 (83.6%) received treatment. Of these 503, 260 (51.7%) received psychotherapy and medication, 130 (25.8%) received medication only, and 93 (18.5%) received psychotherapy only. Compared with people without health or mental health insurance, individuals with health insurance (66.7% versus 57.5%) and mental health insurance (74.6% versus 55.3%) were more likely to comply with the recommendation to obtain follow-up evaluation. One-half of the people treated for depression received a combination of psychotherapy and medication. Lack of insurance was associated with not following the recommendation to obtain further evaluation and treatment.

Development of a Brief Screening Instrument: The HANDS

Background: The present study was designed to develop a briefer screening scale of approximately 10 items which maintained the validity of the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale in a sample similar to that attending National Depression Screening Day (NDSD), as well as a more general audience. Methods: We first administered 70 items from a variety of existing rating scales to 40 subjects who answered an ad for depressed subjects and 55 who answered an ad for non-depressed subjects, all of whose diagnoses were confirmed by the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID). Based on the correlation between each item and the diagnostic criterion, we reduced the number of items to 17 which we then administered to another 45 subjects who answered an ad similar to that used for NDSD and also underwent a SCID interview. Based on these results, we arrived at the final 10-item Harvard Department of Psychiatry/NDSD scale (HANDS) with the assistance of the item-response theory. The items are scored for frequency of occurrence of each symptom over the past 2 weeks. Total scores range from 0 to 30. Results: The 10-item scale (HANDS) has good internal consistency and validity: a cutpoint score of 9 or greater gave sensitivity of at least 95% in both studies. Although specificity was lower for all scales in the self-selected population, the HANDS performed at least as well as the 20-item Zung Scale, the 21-item Beck Depression Inventory-II and the 15-item Hopkins Symptom Depression Checklist. Conclusion: The 10-item HANDS performs as well as other widely used longer self-report scales and has the advantage of briefer administration time.

Effectiveness of community-based screening for depression.

The effectiveness of a voluntary depression screening program was assessed by determining 1) whether participants in the 1994 National Depression Screening Day went for recommended follow-up examinations and 2) the characteristics that differentiated those who did and did not return. Randomly selected participants (N = 1,169) from 99 facilities completed a follow-up telephone survey. Of 805 people for whom follow-up was recommended, 56.5% (N = 455) went for an appointment. The severity of depressive symptoms in these subjects ranged from severe (33.4%, N = 152) and marked (41.3%, N = 188) to minimal (17.1%, N = 78) and normal (8.1%, N = 37). Subjects with marked or severe depression were more likely to respond to the screening recommendation than were those with minimal depressive symptoms. However, at each level of symptom severity, subjects who had received previous treatment were more likely to adhere to the screening recommendation than were those with no previous treatment. Of those who returned for a recommended follow-up, 72.1% were diagnosed with depression. Of those who did not return, 29.5% cited lack of insurance, under insurance, or inadequate finances, and 38.0% felt they could "handle" depression on their own. Voluntary screening for depression is an effective way to bring certain untreated depressed individuals to treatment. Inadequate insurance and the belief that individuals can manage depression on their own continue to be barriers to seeking treatment among some depressed individuals who attend a depression screening program.

Who comes to a voluntary depression screening program?

The purpose of this study was to describe who comes to a voluntary depression screening program by analyzing findings from the 1992 National Depression Screening Day. Survey results from 5,367 adult volunteers at 345 facilities were analyzed. The authors examined the prevalence of depression detected at the screening test and sociodemographic characteristics and treatment history of the respondents. They also estimated the percentage of these individuals who would actually have a diagnosis of major depression (positive predictive value). The main assessment measure was the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale. Of all participants, 76.6% (N = 4,109) had at least minimal depressive symptoms (score of at least 50 on the Zung depression scale), 53.3% (N = 2,859) had at least moderate symptoms (score of at least 60), and 22.6% (N = 1,214) had severe symptoms (score of at least 70). Few of the depressed respondents were currently in treatment for a mental health problem. The positive predictive value of a screening test diagnosis of depression was between 92.5% and 95.5% when a cutoff score of 60 was used to indicate depression and between 88.7% and 92.3% when a cutoff score of 50 was used. Voluntary screening tests, as exemplified by results from the National Depression Screening Day, provide a good opportunity for identifying previously unidentified and untreated individuals with depression.

National Depression Screening Day: educating the public, reaching those in need of treatment, and broadening professional understanding.

(1995). National Depression Screening Day: Educating the Public, Reaching Those in Need of Treatment, and Broadening Professional Understanding. Harvard Review of Psychiatry: Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 156-159.

National Depression Screening Day Drew Big Attendance in '94

National Depression Screening Day Drew Big Attendance in '94