Patients with long-term diseases to be assessed for depression

GPs must assess people with chronic diseases to see whether they are suffering from depression, under new guidelines.

GPs must assess all patients with long-term diseases such as cancer to see whether they are suffering from depression, under new guidelines published today.

Too many doctors and patients assume that fatigue and weight loss are a result of the disease or the medicines they are taking, according to experts who formulated the guidelines for the National Institute for Healthcare and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

Depression affects one in six people at some point, but is three times more common in people with chronic diseases than in the rest of the population.

John Hindle, a consultant physician with the Betsi Cadwaladr University local health board, who was on the guideline development group, said that improving people's mood may even make them physically better.

"We should give everybody with physical disease the opportunity to be asked about the symptoms of depression," he said.

GPs should be asking two key questions, the guidelines say: during the last month, has the patient been bothered by feeling down, depressed or hopeless in the last month or by having little interest or pleasure in doing things?

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'Not enough support' for mentally ill people to work

Government risks 'writing off' people with mental health problems due to lack of trained professionals

The government needs to take urgent action to make sure support and training is available to get more people with mental illness into work, say campaigners in a new report today.

The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health (SCMH) and the College of Occupational Therapists have published a joint paper arguing that the government risks "writing off" people with mental health problems during the recession if it doesn't take action on employment support immediately.

The paper, 'Vocational Rehabilitation: what is it, who can deliver it and who pays?' claims there is a serious shortage of professionals "with the skills they need to offer expert help" to people who need it most. It says that without expert advisers trained to assess the employment needs of people with mental illness and to offer necessary support once jobs are found, the government will fail to keep its promise to help millions of people with mental health problems long term employment.

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Antipsychotic Prescribing For Children Has Risen Sharply

A research team set out to investigate the epidemiologic features of antibiotic prescribing to patients under the age of 18 by GPs (general practitioners, primary care doctors) in Great Britain. They gathered data from the UK General Practice Research Database, involving 384 participating general practices, to identify how many child/adolescent patients were prescribed at least one antipsychotic drug between the beginning of 1992 to the end of 2005. They calculated age-specific prevalences and incidences of antipsychotic prescribing.

You can read about this in the journal Pediatrics.

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Stop drugging dementia patients, urges report

Ministers should step in to stop inappropriate prescriptions of powerful antipsychotic drugs for Alzheimer's patients, an influential group of MPs has said.

Up to 105,000 people with dementia in Britain are wrongly being treated with the drugs, which are used to control behavioural symptoms such as aggression, they claim. Research has shown that the medications have side effects that can accelerate mental decline, triple the risk of stroke, and double the chances of premature death.

They are intended for psychotic patients suffering from delusions, paranoia and hallucinations. Yet the drugs continue to be used as a first resort to address the challenging behaviour of people suffering from Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia, according to the MPs.

A report from the all-party parliamentary group on dementia demanded Government action on the problem and urged the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, the health watchdog, to carry out a review.

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