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Depressive thoughts in general practice attenders.

P Williams1, D Skuse

  • 1General Practice Research Unit, Institute of Psychiatry, London.

Psychological Medicine
|May 1, 1988
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Depressive thoughts are common in primary care. A scale measuring these thoughts better identified depression in men than in women, aligning more with psychiatric diagnoses.

Area of Science:

  • Psychiatry
  • General Practice
  • Mental Health Research

Background:

  • Depressive thoughts are frequently reported by patients in general practice settings.
  • The accurate diagnosis of depression in primary care can be challenging.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the prevalence of depressive thoughts in patients attending a general practitioner in south London.
  • To compare the diagnostic utility of reported depressive thoughts with general practitioner (GP) and psychiatrist diagnoses of depression.
  • To evaluate a scale of depressive thinking for its ability to discriminate between depressed and non-depressed individuals, examining differences between sexes.

Main Methods:

  • A sample of patients attending a south London general practitioner were assessed.
  • Patients' self-reported depressive thoughts were collected.

Related Experiment Videos

  • A 'scale' composed of questions about depressive thinking was administered.
  • The scale's discriminatory power was compared between depressed and non-depressed men and women, using clinical diagnoses as a reference.

    • Main Results:

    • Depressive thoughts were commonly reported by patients in this primary care sample.
    • The occurrence of depressive thoughts correlated more closely with a psychiatrist's diagnosis of depression than with the general practitioner's diagnosis.
    • The depressive thinking scale effectively discriminated between depressed and non-depressed men.
    • The same scale was a much poorer discriminator for women, indicating potential sex-based differences in symptom reporting or recognition.

    Conclusions:

    • Self-reported depressive thoughts are prevalent in primary care but may not perfectly align with clinical diagnoses made by general practitioners.
    • A scale measuring depressive thinking shows promise for identifying depression in men within primary care settings.
    • Further research is needed to understand the poorer performance of the depressive thinking scale in women and to improve depression screening tools for all patients.