There are great personal, economic and societal costs caused by depression and yet depression is significantly under-diagnosed and under-treated. Primary care physicians, the persons most likely to observe the symptoms of clinical depression and initiate treatment, miss more cases than they recognize. Because of the stigma attached to mood disorders, patients are often very unwilling to adhere to treatment protocols. In fact, the absence/lateness of diagnosis and the stigma combine to exacerbate the severity and incidence of this disease in the U.S. population. Education is sorely needed. In recognition of the need for education with respect to depression, especially of primary care physicians and patients, the AHCPR devoted effort to generation of a Clinical Practice Guideline for depression as one of its earliest efforts in April 1993. The applicant states that the data in the Guideline are sound, and its developers are excellently qualified; yet the impact of the Guideline will not be determined by those factors but by the extent to which it is employed. Few physicians will be able to take the time to read the large Depression Guideline Report; some may work their way through the two-volume (about 300 pages) condensed version, and hopefully many will use the Quick Reference Guide and/or distribute the guide for patients to their clientele. But any mechanism that can increase the utility of the information in the Guideline will truly foster the intent of the AHCPR. This project addresses such a mechanism: a multimedia training disc for presentation of information regarding depression to primary care physicians and their patients.
