Are doctors getting the balance right? Treatment for depression in England, 1983 to 2017

Publication type

Journal Article

Author

Publication date

February 6, 2019

Summary:

This paper investigates the risk of depression, and prescription of medical treatments for depression, among English women & men since 1983. It assesses some criticisms which have been made against medical healthcare professionals, such as their treatment of younger women with mental health problems. Some academics criticise doctors for over-prescribing anti-depressants; whereas other critics imply doctors often fail to prescribe treatment for depressed people. Many of these negative comments about English doctors seem unjustified, when assessed using survey data. This paper uses household surveys from 1983, to assess some aspects of the mental health problems and medical treatment experienced by survey respondents. Analysis of survey data, and qualitative information sources such as focus groups, may help doctors and other health professionals improve their work in future. Staff working for the National Health Service has much to be proud of; but there is more work to do.

Published in

MOJ Women's Health

Volume and page numbers

Volume: 8 , p.78 -84

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.15406/mojwh.2019.08.00216

ISSN

24755494

Subjects

Link

https://medcraveonline.com/MOJWH/

Notes

Open Access

© 2019 Simister

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and build upon your work non-commercially.

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