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Volume 7 Supplement 1

International Society on Brain and Behaviour: 3rd International Congress on Brain and Behaviour

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Depression at the patients' diagnosis with cancer

Annals of General Psychiatry volume 7, Article number: S96 (2008) Cite this article

Background

Cancer is the second likeliest cause of mortality in Greece. There are 3.500-4000 new cases per year. The literature suggests that major depression is present in 25% of cancer patients.

Materials and methods

We interviewed 100 patients with different types of cancer and 100 healthy people without cancer as a control group (January-Jul 2005). The Hamilton Depression Rating Scale was used to quantify depression severity.

Results

41% of the patients fulfilled the diagnostic criteria for Major Depressive Disorder according to DSM-IV-TR in comparison with only 4% of the control group control. This significant difference suggests that cancer is significantly related to the development of depression. The severity of depression is not related to the type of cancer or to gender. However there was a strong relationship between depression and age.

Conclusions

Depression is an important problem in patients with cancer and intense treatment is necessary.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Psychiatric Department, University Hospital “Mother Teresa”, Tirana, Albania

    Anila Hashorva & Irma Bekteshi

  2. University Hospital “Mother Teresa”, Tirana, Albania

    Elizana Petrela

Authors
  1. Anila Hashorva
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  2. Irma Bekteshi
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  3. Elizana Petrela
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Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Hashorva, A., Bekteshi, I. & Petrela, E. Depression at the patients' diagnosis with cancer. Ann Gen Psychiatry 7 (Suppl 1), S96 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-7-S1-S96

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-7-S1-S96

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Annals of General Psychiatry

ISSN: 1744-859X