[Patient education of the depressed patient and his family]

The information available to the patient and to his family today pose new conditions for the care of the depressed; it facilitates the acceptance of the illness and of its effects, it is indispensable for the therapeutic relationship as well as for the effective observance by the patient of his treatment, and thus contributes to the improvement of the quality of life of the depressed. Certain rules must be observed in the transmission of this information: it must be accessible and understandable to everyone, it must be concise, it must be repeated and revised according to circumstances, it must discourage self-diagnosis and self-prescription by the patient. This information is to be transmitted chiefly by the doctor and the pharmacist. The depressed may also appeal to complementary sources of informations: books, journals and more rarely scientific publications. Patients' associations provide another potential source for the dissemination of information. Their chief objective is to provide this information not only to the patients and their immediate entourage, but also to the population at large.