Critical Care Givers Prone to Depression

The caregivers of critically ill patients are subject to depression, and seemingly resistant to treatment, according to researchers from Case Western Reserve University. Their study, recently published in Chest, followed the caregivers of 290 critically ill patients for 2 months. The caregivers had abnormally high rates of depression: 25% were depressed 2 months after their patients’ discharges, and 16.7% were moderately- to-severely depressed. A disease management program had almost no effect on the rates of depression in the caregivers. http://www.chestjournal.org