Integrated Mental Health and Medical Care Improves Treatment of Depression in Cancer Patients

Many patients with chronic diseases also suffer from depression, which can lower quality of life, complicate medical management, and increase healthcare costs. Because primary care services often treat patients with depression inadequately and are coordinated only poorly with mental health services, programs that integrate mental health and primary care have attracted attention. Researchers in Scotland randomized 500 cancer patients (life expectancies, ≥12 months) who screened positive for major depression to receive usual care from their primary care physicians (PCPs) or to participate in a program called Depression Care for People with Cancer (DCPC). Patients enrolled in DCPC had as many as 10 sessions with trained oncology nurse case man…