LEICESTER, England, Jul 30, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Primary care physicians in
Britain were able to recognize about half of people who had clinical depression,
researchers said.
Dr. Alex Mitchell of University of Leicester and Dr. Amol Vaze and Dr. Sanajay
Rao, both of Leicester Partnership Trust, examined 41 trials from nine countries
that involved 50,000 patients.
The analysis, published in The Lancet, also found that the primary care
physicians correctly diagnosed 80 percent of healthy people who did not have
depression.
"Research also suggests equivalent errors in the diagnosis of depression from
allied health professionals and hospital specialists," Mitchell said in a
statement.
"Health professionals may be reluctant to give a label of depression,
particularly in the medical notes. Further not all diagnostic errors are
converted into therapeutic mistakes. Clinicians appear to treat those in whom
they are most confident of the diagnosis and not those in whom a diagnosis is
uncertain."
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