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Depression
Depression significantly affects your patient's health similar to other chronic medical conditions and impacts their quality of life.
- Prevalence is high - Lifetime major depression for women is 12% and 6% for men.
- Screening in primary care visits is important - Most depression is diagnosed and treated in primary care.
- Best practice approaches vary - Mild, moderate & severe depression each has different best practice approaches.
- Careful monitoring needed for children, adolescents and young adults (to age 24) - Use of antidepressant medications themselves may induce suicidal behavior in youths.
- Dual diagnoses may involve special considerations - Prescribing an antidepressant to your patient with a Bipolar disorder may cause a manic episode. Depression often coexists with substance abuse.
Our depression management programs and resources are designed to support your relationship with your patients.
- In addition, the support that you and your patient's receive from these programs can accelerate your quality performance on the MN Community Measurement Depression Remission and Response measures, which can be reviewed at Medical Group Profile Pages - MN Community Measurement (mncm.org)
- Antidepressant education is automatically started through our On Your Way Program when you start your patients on an antidepressant medication for a new episode of depression.
For assistance in finding a participating mental health clinician, please ask your HealthPartners insured members to call Behavioral Health Navigators at 952-883-5811 or 1-888-638-8787 or call the Member Services number found on the back of the member card.
Practitioner Resources
Cultural considerations
Patient Resources
Manage my health virtual coach for Stress, Healthy Thinking and Medicine to treat Depression.
Social Media Resources available in the ToolKit. (See page 13)