Early Diagnosis of Depression: Public Health

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Depression in young adults has become a significant health problem across the US. It causes persistent feelings of loss of interest in activities and sadness and, in most cases, affect how young adults behave or think about themselves. If not detected on time, depression in young adults can lead to functional, emotional, or physical complications. When patients adesses a specialist to seek care, depression is underdiagnosed and undertreated. A study by Cacheda et al. (2019) revealed that the early detection and treatment of depression could lead to positive outcomes. Providing early interventions helps young adults to recover quickly, have positive relationships and get more meaningful lives. This study will look for to make an early diagnosis of depression among young adults in primary practice care using the PICOT and come up with specific objectives.

The PICO question is, can an early diagnosis of depression for young adults between 18 to 40 years using dual models be more effective compared to the singleton model in improving the treatment of the disease? This question addresses the following points:

  • P  early diagnosis of depression for young adults between 18 to 40 years
  • I  dual models
  • C  singleton model
  • O  improving the treatment of the disease

Objectives of the Research Question

One of the main objectives of this research question is to determine the procedure that can be used to make an early diagnosis of depression among young adults between 18 years to 40 years. According to a research study aimed at finding the most effective method of early detection of depression using primary care data is dual model (Cacheda et al., 2019). The study used both a singleton and dual method to detect depression. The singleton method used a single binary classifier and two threshold functions, including negative and positive ones (Chiu et al., 2021). However, this methods results were modest as it required much evidence to discard one option and then adopt the other, leading to delays in realizing the results.

In the second trial, the study used a dual approach whereby one machine was used to detect depressed individuals, and another was for non-distressed individuals. Writing features were responsible for depression in this case, while the non-depression method used semantic features to detect non-depression (Cacheda et al., 2019). It concluded that dual models were more effective than the singleton method in detecting depression in young aldults and could improve the overall performance by 10% (Cacheda et al., 2019). This shows that the dual model is more effective in primary care practice in detecting depression compared to the singleton method. Therefore, this study will aim to find which methods will be more effective than the other in the early detection of depression among young adults between 18-40 years.

The second objective of this research is to analyze how an early diagnosis of depression among young aldults between 18 years to 40 years in primary care practices reduces the risk of self-harm. Depression is associated with various harmful behaviors such as suicide, eating disorders, and substance misuse, which may cause self-harm. Twenge (2020) reveals that suicide is the leading cause of death for young adults between 18 to 24 years. Young adults are more likely to do deliberate harm to themselves when depressed compared to older individuals. Another self-harm practice that may arise due to depression is eating disorders whereby depressed individuals may suffer from bulimia nervosa where some will induce vomiting to avoid eating while others will opt for diet pills instead of eating (Ettman et al., 2020). The most commonly abused drugs are alcholoh and cannabis, with a prevalence rate of 37% and 53%, respectively (Ettman et al., 2020). Therefore, this study will seek to establish if an early diagnosis of depression can hinder the risk of indvinduals doing self harm or to others.

The third objective is to develop an appropriate follow-up for young individuals between 18-40 years who are diagnosed with depression in the primary care setting. When patients demonstrate symptoms of depression in a primary care setting, the physician is more likely to advocate for immediate treatment. This implies that they do not wait for the indivinduals to make return visits so that they can treat them. The common types of treatment fro depression are pharmacontherapy and councelling. These two interventions require follow-ups to ensure that they check on the patients health progress. A research by Weiß et al. (2020) revealed that most physicians refer for a follow-up session within two weeks for patients with moderate to severe psychiatric disorders such as depression. This shows that following up is essential because it helps reduce the patients relapse rate. When patients have relapses; they are likely to cause self-harm to themselves. In addition, the follow-up is done to increase the rate of remission. Therefore, this study will discuss the most effective follow-up for young individuals who have been diagnosed with depression.

Conclusion

Depression is a serious health issue among young adults between 18 -40 years old. Therefore, the healthcare systems have to come up with effective methods of treating the disorder. For the systems to ensure effective treatment of the disorder, early intervention is very essneitla as it increases positive outcomes. This studys objectives include finding the main procedure for making early diagnosis, how early diagnosis helps to reduce the risk of self-harm and establishing appropriate follow-ups.

References

Cacheda, F., Fernandez, D., Novoa, F. J., & Carneiro, V. (2019). Early detection of depression: Social network analysis and random forest techniques. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 21(6), e12554. Web.

Chiu, I.-M., Lu, W., Tian, F., & Hart, D. (2021). Early detection of severe functional impairment among adolescents with major depression using logistic classifier. Frontiers in Public Health, 8(3). Web.

Ettman, C. K., Abdalla, S. M., Cohen, G. H., Sampson, L., Vivier, P. M., & Galea, S. (2020). Prevalence of depression symptoms in us adults before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. JAMA Network Open, 3(9), e2019686. Web.

Twenge, J. M. (2020). Increases in depression, self-harm, and suicide among u.s. adolescents after 2012 and links to technology use: possible mechanisms. Psychiatric Research and Clinical Practice, 2(1), appi.prcp.20190. Web.

Weiß, L., Zeeck, A., Rottler, E., Weiß, H., Hartmann, A., & von Wietersheim, J. (2020). Follow-up treatment after inpatient therapy of patients with unipolar depressionCompliance with the guidelines? Frontiers in Psychiatry, 11(3). Web.

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