DEPRESSION OR ANXIETY

Depression or Anxiety which is predominant for Medical and Mental Health Practitioners

Abstract

Depression and anxiety or anxiety and depression; which factor is predominant? For medical and mental health practitioners this is as confounding as the query of which came first, the chicken or egg, as comorbidity weighting agreement is yet to be conscribed on the matter. Which comes first? Unpacking the code of prevalence in an individual for anxiety and in an individual for depression has been singularly examined by utilising the GAD 7 and the emotional stroop task, respectively with markedly profound indictors representing a population affected by the affective disorders. This study combines the GAD7 and the emotional stroop task (STAD) in an attempt to correlate the relationship between those individuals demonstrating affective disorders (anxiety and depression, succinctly) and weighting them, respectively, in an attempt to predict a relationship between anxiety and or depression. A-priori hypothesis prediction is that high anxiety scores will yield high depression scores. Being that no specific scale has yet been designed prior to this STAD scale, its value in the weighting of the prevalence of either factor as indicator for clinicians could greatly reduce costs in treatment and possibly prevent the risk of pathological long-term depressive disorders based on anxiety exacerbated diseases.

Depression or Anxiety which is predominant for Medical and Mental Health Practitioners

Introduction

Anxiety and depression frequently co-occur in the same individual either in sequence or simultaneously, yet seldom diagnosed as a specific phenomenon in causation of one another. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) utilises the term “anxious depression” within a collection of syndromal disorders to include panic disorder, generalised anxiety disorder, dysthymia, depressive disorder, social anxiety disorder or post - traumatic stress disorder. McGrath & Miller (2010) refer to these specific co-occurring depression and anxiety related symptomology as “comorbid depressive and anxiety disorders”. The new nomenclature will be seen in the revised DSM-V. Many anxiety and depression symptoms do not meet full DSM-V standards for full diagnostic disease criteria and fall into syndrome category, leaving many patients without a category for clinicians to adequately place them in NHS structured care plans, hence the need for revision. As McGrath & Miller state “a sub-syndromal anxiety disorder can co-occur with sub-syndromal depressive symptoms, including depressive symptoms not otherwise specified”, (2010b, p90). To reiterate; more simply, there is no current indicator or interpretation whether the anxiety or the depression is weighted as the predominant factor in the disease: however it is clear they certainly do co-exist. This sub-syndromal anxiety and depression category is an official diagnosis in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th Revision (ICD-10). It is classed as the “mixed anxiety - depression disorder, or ICD-10 MADD”, (World Health Organisation, 1992).

Having received world medical recognition and national research attention in funding, comorbid anxiety and depression is costing the health industry and the individual shocking amounts in more than monetary figures. The cost in quality of life is truly ...