Healthcare access points for treating adult depression

Adult Depression

It is common for everyone to feel sad for a period of time and such phases tend to phase away after some time. But when such a feeling of sadness and profoundly impacts the daily routine of an individual it is often defined clinically as depression. This form of mental illness tends to happen more in adults compared to children and needs treatment. The consequences of this illness can be serious and sometimes can even lead to suicides if left untreated.

There can be social, psychological, and biological factors behind the development of depression among adults. Stress and strain of daily life or some sad life events can drive an individual to depression. Depression also tends to set in among older adults due to loss of ability to live independently due to a number of factors like limited mobility, frailty, chronic pain or other physical or mental problems. If left untreated, depression can also become chronic in nature. Hence it is very important that early identification, detection, and treatment is typically used for this disease.

Discuss in detail the Healthcare access points for population with adult depression

In most cases, people who are diagnosed with major depressive disorder need to undergo treatment for 4- to 8-week trial of an antidepressant medication according to depression treatment guidelines, and a 4- to 8-week trial period of psychotherapy or be treated with a combination for both. Therefore, it is important that the patients with depression get access to more than one or more than one form of health care facilities.

a. Acute care hospitals

As we have discussed earlier that chronic and acute cases of depression can even lead to suicides or attempted suicides. Inability to conduct regular life chores can also cause other illness to develop among adults suffering from depression. Therefore in cases when an individual gets chronic or acute depression symptoms, doctors often advise psychiatric hospitalization, especially among older adults, for primary treatment of depression (Zivin, Wharton, & Rostant, 2013). On the other hand, longer medical hospital stays are also associated with chronic and acute depression, especially for older adults. Access to acute care hospitals is also associated with depression patients as it can also result in attempted suicides (Carter & Reymann, 2014) as well as for increased chances of rehabilitation needs.

b. Community health centers

For initial identification of adult depression among a population, access to community health centers can prove to be helpful. Since for most individuals, community health centers are the most accessible and affordable, it forms an important component for identification and early treatment of depression. However, for efficient diagnosis of adult depression, community health centers require the presence of psychologists provide for providing mental and behavioral health services.

d. Other providers

Apart from the above-mentioned forms of intervention and treatments for adult depression, other providers of relief can be the health care professionals such as psychiatrists and psychologists who could propose treatment regimens for patients. Many could prefer to approach such professionals to the community health center or getting admitted to hospitals and hence access to such professionals is important for treatment of adult depression. Another provider could be counselors for patients who are not generally suffering from acute or chronic depression. Similar to doctors, access to such counselors is also important.

e. Public health services

Since adult depression can happen to anyone and everyone who face acute situations, this illness can happen to people who are not well off or do not have the means to access private treatment. Hence the role of public health services is important for such groups of people who suffer from depression. Public health services are most often delivered free of cost and hence could be the choice of health intervention for people who cannot spend high amounts on private healthcare (Griffin, 2012).

Another important role that a public health system can provide is to monitor depression among population and help in the development, testing and programs for addressing the problem of depression among adults. It can also be used for promotion of awareness of healthy lifestyles for prevention and reduction of depression. Therefore access to public health systems is important for the treatment of adult depression.