We thought this article from The Atlantic about making mental health screenings a higher priority in health monitoring was worth sharing here. Please read the excerpt we’ve selected, and click the link below for the full article. And if you live in the greater Cleveland area and would like to talk about a depression screening for yourself or someone you love, we hope you’ll contact us.
The USPSTF first added depression screening to its collection of guidelines in 2002, when the task force recommended screening for adults only in health-care practices that had “systems in place to assure accurate diagnosis, effective treatment, and follow-up.” The guideline had a C grade, meaning that depression screening wasn’t recommended in situations that didn’t have all those qualifiers in place. Between then and now, the only other change has been to make the guideline even more restrictive: In 2009, the group updated the list of qualifiers to include “staff-assisted depression care.” In practices that didn’t offer such care (along with everything else on the list), depression screening was still discouraged.
Given the prevalence of depression among Americans, this most recent update to expand screening has been sorely needed for some time. Based on census data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 7.6 percent of Americans over the age of 12—that’s more than 20 million people—suffered from moderate to severe depressive symptoms from 2009 to 2012. The same report found that 43 percent of people with severe depressive symptoms reported significant challenges with their professional and personal lives. Yet under the old guidelines, patients who came to their primary-care doctors with complaints mirroring depression symptoms might still leave their visit without receiving, or even discussing their risk.