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Monday, June 23, 2003While the lead author of the study, Ronald Kessler, Ph.D., had been quoted in the June 18 New York Times as saying family doctors do not provide quality care for depression, he has issued a correction sent to nationwide news services. "There is no evidence in our study that family physicians have a lower rate of successfully treating depression than other general medical doctors," Kessler said in his June 19 correction. "I regret having unfairly singled out family medicine specialists in my comments." Evidently, what he meant to say was that all physicians, other than psychiatrists, mistreat depression. At least, according to the full apology. But his words, having appeared in the paper of record, have already attained the status of truth, as evidenced by this column from Sunday’s Times: The JAMA study finding that depression is treated inadequately suggests that family doctors have yet to adopt this view. The cardiac research hints that they may have to - in which case, the cultural standing of depression may change as well. Depression may look ever less like a charming element in the artistic temperament and ever more like a progressive, systemic disease. The author, Peter D. Kramer, is working on a book about depression, according to the blurb at the end of the piece. What do you want to bet that his slander against family physicians makes it into the book? Addendum: The study, by the way, based its evidence that depression is undertreated on household surveys. Surveys are a notoriously bad way to collect reliable data. You'd be surprised at how little people know about themselves. We have a nutritional questionaire at the office that asks people if they've lost or gained more than ten pounds in the past six months. The majority of people, especially women, respond that they've gained, but the weights recorded on the chart show that they've remained the same. I've never trusted studies based on surveys since we introduced that questionaire. posted by Sydney on 6/23/2003 07:53:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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