The Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care Institute for Quality Improvement released a new toolkit for primary care providers for screening and diagnosing depression.
Here are five key notes:
1. The tri-fold brochure points primary care providers toward tools to screen patients for depression. It has a simple flow chat showing providers how to integrate depression screening into their patient intake process.
2. Two Princeton economists recently linked comorbidities of depression — suicide, drug addiction and alcohol abuse — to rising fatalities among males with a high school diploma or less.
3. The AAAHC-accredited primary care organizations observed macro trends on the micro level and requested the Institute develop literature to help treat adult depression.
4. Primary care physicians write around two-thirds of the antidepressant prescriptions in the United States, but still many depressed patients aren't treated, potentially due to associated stigma.
5. The toolkit also draws on the U.S. Veteran's Affairs/Department of Defense Major Depression Disorder Clinical Practice Guideline to provide a framework for the process.