Physicians now have a tool that can diagnose depression in cancer patients. Patients sometimes will need additional treatment to enable them to cope with their cancer more effectively.
The problem has been that doctors might have a hard time telling what patients actually have clinical depression. The patient may be just showing normal signs of sadness, feelings which commonly result from being diagnosed with cancer.
A team from the University of Liverpool's Division of Primary Care has created this method of testing called Brief Edinburgh Depression Scale (BEDS). What this test does is assess the cancer patient's mental condition with a six-step scale. The test includes questions on worthlessness, guilt and suicidal thoughts.
Professor Mari Lloyd-Williams, lead researcher says "The effects of depression can be as difficult to cope with as the physical symptoms of a terminal illness such as cancer. Patients often feel useless, that they are to blame, and even experience suicidal thoughts during cancer - these are all signs of depression but rarely elicited."
The clinical trial that was conducted included 246 patients with advanced cancer. Twenty-five percent of those patients were shown to have depression that had previously not been diagnosed.
