OBJECTIVE To determine the diagnostic accuracy of two verbally asked questions for screening for depression. DESIGN Cross sectional criterion standard validation study. SETTING 15 general practices in New Zealand. PARTICIPANTS 421 consecutive patients not taking psychotropic drugs. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Sensitivity, specificity, and likelihood ratios of the two questions compared with t...

BACKGROUND There are numerous instruments for screening for depression. A feasible screen is good at both recognising and predicting depression. AIMS To study the ability of the Depression Scale and its items to recognise and predict a depressive episode. METHOD A sample of patients attending primary care was examined in 1991-992 and again 7 years later. The accuracy of the Depression Scale...

CONTEXT Reduction in adult neurogenesis has been proposed as a mechanism for onset of depression. Semaphorins and their coreceptors, plexins, have been implicated in nervous system development and in adult neurogenesis. A recent genomewide association study of schizophrenia identified a variant of the gene encoding plexin A2 (PLXNA2) to be most consistently associated across study samples. Comm...

BACKGROUND Mental disorders are associated with increased mortality, but population-based surveys with reliable diagnostic procedures controlling for somatic health status are scarce. AIMS To assess excess mortality associated with depressive, anxiety and alcohol use disorders and the principal causes of death. METHOD In a nationally representative sample of Finns aged 30-70 years, psychiat...

This study examines the prevalence of psychiatric disorders among lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) men with eating disorders. A total of 388 white, black, and Latino LGB men and women were sampled from community venues. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) diagnoses of anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder were assessed using the World Health Org...

BACKGROUND Major depressive disorder (MDD) is one of the important causes of disease burden in the general population. Given the experiencing rapid economic and social changes since the early 1990s and the internationally recognized diagnostic criteria and interview instruments across the surveys during 2001-2010 in china, the epidemiological studies on MDD got varied results. We performed this...

BACKGROUND Brief depression screens have recently been developed, but their use in older or minority populations has not been studied. To date, optimal depression screens and optimal cutpoints have not been identified for middle-aged and older Hispanic primary care patients. METHODS This study compares multiple versions of four depression screening tools--Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depr...

BACKGROUND The clinical course and epidemiology of major depressive episodes (MDEs) may be influenced by reciprocal interactions between an individual and the social environment. Epidemiological data concerning these interactions may assist with anticipating the clinical needs of depressed patients. METHODS The data source for this study was a Canadian longitudinal study, the National Populat...