Journal of affective disorders
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Patients with depression often experience pain. There is limited understanding of the relation between pain and other symptoms (depressive, anxious and non-painful somatic symptoms). This exploratory study assesses pain severity and interference of pain with functioning in a clinically depressed population and investigates the relation between the different groups of symptoms. ⋯ Over half of depressed patients in this study experienced moderate to severe pain. Painful somatic symptoms appear to be closely related to non-painful somatic symptoms, more than to depressive or anxious symptoms suggesting that painful and non-painful somatic symptoms can be considered as one group of 'somatic symptoms,' all of them associated with depressive and anxious symptoms.
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Comparative Study
Depression in Asian-American and Caucasian undergraduate students.
Depression is a serious and often under-diagnosed and undertreated mental health problem in college students which may have fatal consequences. Little is known about ethnic differences in prevalence of depression in US college campuses. This study compares depression severity in Asian-American and Caucasian undergraduate students at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). ⋯ These findings suggest that outreach to female and Asian-American undergraduate students is important and attention to Korean-American undergraduates may be especially worthwhile.
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Rates of PTSD and depression are high in Korean War veterans. The prevalence and impact of the two disorders occurring comorbidly, however, has not been investigated. This paper aims to investigate the extent to which PTSD and depression co-occur in Australian veterans of the Korean War, the symptom severity characteristics of comorbidity, the impact on life satisfaction and quality, and the association with war-related predictors. ⋯ Comorbid PTSD and depression, and PTSD alone, are prevalent among Korean War veterans, are both associated with war-related factors 50 years after the Korean War, and may represent a single traumatic stress construct. The results have important implications for understanding complex psychopathology following trauma.
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The consumption of benzodiazepines and cyclopyrrolones has in recent years attracted considerable interest due to serious side effects. In twelve health care practices in Denmark a few simple rules to reduce the consumption were established. Telephone recipes were abolished, and prescriptions were issued for only a single month's usage and only following personal consultation. These rules are generally in accordance with recommendations applicable in, for example, England, Norway and Denmark. After 15 months, consumption was roughly halved. There is a general lack of knowledge about whether an intervention as described above leads to a substitution with other medicines. Here, especially antidepressants are in the spotlight. ⋯ The average prescription volume for the twelve health care practices corresponds to a relative decline. Fears that an intervention of the type mentioned above would lead to an uncontrollable increase in the consumption of antidepressants are unfounded.