HEALTH & SCIENCE

Depression increasing, even among physicians

As suicide rates increase, more aggressive care is needed, especially when the physician is the patient.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. July 7, 2003.

Washington -- Physicians have been exemplary at following their own advice when it comes to such health risks as smoking. But they don't do as well at recognizing and acting on depression, whether in themselves or in their patients.

Research has long reported that physicians' suicide rate is higher than that of the general public, and the connection between major depression and suicide is well known.

These factors, coupled with the desire to provide a meaningful tribute to a friend and colleague who had taken his life two years earlier, led the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to gather a group of experts in Philadelphia last fall to take a fresh look at the issue.

Their findings and recommendations to eliminate punitive barriers to physicians seeking treatment, such as discrimination in professional advancement and medical licensing, were published in the June 18 JAMA -- a theme issue on depression.

If such barriers were eliminated, physicians could more easily recognize and treat depression not only in themselves but also in their patients, predicted John Mann, MD, professor of psychiatry at Columbia Medical Center in New York and co-chair of the foundation's workshop. "Physicians, their patients and society will all be the beneficiaries."

Steven Miles, MD, a Minnesota geriatrician and workshop participant, said his own battle with depression gave him a new view of his patients' problems.

"The experience of being depressed and being successfully treated has improved my skill as a physician by giving me insight into conditions that patients experience that I might not otherwise have had," he said.

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