Obstetrician–gynecologists and self-identified depression: personal and clinical

Abstract

A survey was designed to explore the effect of obstetrician-gynecologists' subjective awareness of depression in themselves and close family/friends on screening patients for depression and on assessing and treating depression in three scenarios describing hypothetical patients during the adolescence, postpartum, and perimenopausal periods. Questionnaires were mailed to 397 members of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) who participate in the Collaborative Ambulatory Research Network (CARN). Fifty-five percent of the questionnaires were returned. One third of physicians reported having suffered from depression occasionally (28.1%), often (3.8%), or all the time (2.4%) during the past year. Having personally suffered from depression was associated with elevated assessment of depression in the scenarios but not with elevated rates of screening for depression in actual practice, nor with aggressiveness of treatment choices in the scenarios. Awareness that a close friend suffered from depression was not associated with lowered mood as measured, but was associated with increased rates of screening for depression in adolescent, postpartum, and perimenopausal patients, and with elevated assessment of depression and more aggressive treatment practices for depression in hypothetical patients at these three life stages. As such, physicians' practices regarding depression may be influenced by something other than reactivity to their own emotional state.

Interactions of doctors with the pharmaceutical industry

“…In an accompanying survey, when asked what the best way to treat possibly depressed hypothetical patients would be, we found that respondents who had samples of antidepressants available were far more likely to indicate treatment with antidepressants than were those who did not have samples available. 23 This suggests an association between sample availability and increased prescribing. Alternative explanations are possible-for example, doctors who are more likely to prescribe may be more likely to keep samples available.…”

Depression and Sleep Quality of Obstetricians

“…Japanese obstetricians work about 49 hours for women and 55 hours for men [22]. A study from the United States reported that a third of the members of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists had depression [23]. Of the obstetricians who participated in this study, 27.3% had suffered from depression at some time, 34.3% had had depression the year before, and 16.5% of obstetricians were depressed at the time of the study.…”

Obstetrician-gynecologists’ knowledge, attitudes and practices regarding major depressive disorder

“…For example, Coleman and colleagues [5] found that almost 30% of ob-gyns incorrectly diagnosed a hypothetical patient vignette with MDD, with about half of those who wrongly diagnosed the patient then prescribing an antidepressant. Further, though 72.6% of ob-gyns see adolescent patients at least monthly [6] and prevalence rates of MDD in this population are reported just above 11% [7], as little as 34% of ob-gyns have reported routinely screening for MDD in the adolescent population [8].…”