Patient’s and general practitioner’s different views on patient’s depression

Differences between patient’s and general practitioner’s view on patient’s depressive syndromes was investigated in a prospective birth cohort study of 70 year old people (n=1032) in Turku City, Finland. The aim of this study was to find factors which are typical for people having depressive syndromes in old age and help medical and nursing staff to identify depressive syndromes in the general aged people. The study consisted of a structural postal questionnaire including patient’s perception of his depression, an interview made by a public health nurse included mini-mental state examination (MMSE) and the self-rating depression scale of Zung, an interview and comprehensive clinical examination by a general practitioner. Out of the 847 persons who completed the depression test, 12.6% showed symptoms of depressive syndrome. The views of those who scored more than 45 points in the Zung depression scale on their own depressiveness differed from the general practitioner’s opinion. In the general practitioner’s examination and interview 58% of the subjects had no depressive symptoms even though the test results indicated that they were depressed. The depressed group stood out most clearly in two questions: Do you feel you are needed and do you have future plans? When the same questions were repeated 5 years later, the difference was still statistically significant between depressed and non-depressed group (P<0.0001). The data indicated that medical and nursing staff should take self-assessments seriously and look into them in closer detail. General practitioners and nurses should learn to ask right questions and use short depression scale systematically in order to facilitate the detection of depressive syndromes.