Cognitive impairment is common to both diseases. Both disorders are typically invisible, making the patient appear to be physically well. The fact of having a severely debilitating chronic disease can in itself cause depression. It is now an accepted fact that most chronic diseases are accompanied by some form of depression. Depression has historically been the specialty of psychiatrists and consequently most general practice physicians are not experts in determining whether the depression they are seeing in a patient is a primary or secondary diagnosis.
Depression is also an early warning sign of many other illnesses, including cancer.
The diagnosis of depression in general medicine often means that the person will not be treated by a primary care medical doctor, but will be referred out to a psychiatrist or psychologist. In doing this, the physician misses the opportunity to treat physical problems which may in fact be causing the depression. The better approach, when primary depressive disorder is not the absolute and clear diagnosis, would be to seek consultation in treating the depression to see if reducing the depression also reduces the accompanying physical symptoms. The following information should be helpful in this discussion. All rights reserved.