Ever been HAD?

[摘要] Some years ago, when I worked in an urban practice where mild to moderate depression was far more common than it is in my island retreat, I went through a phase of using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale to assess my patients. I can't remember whether this was as a result of attending a training session — the Defeat Depression campaign was in top gear at the time — or from reading an enthusiastic article on the subject, but it must have seemed a good idea at the time. By totting up the ticks I was able to see that not only was the person in front of me pretty depressed, let's say, but also rather anxious; or sometimes jolly anxious but not really very depressed. The exercise seemed to add a touch of objectivity to what had hitherto seemed a rather intuitive and subjective exercise in diagnosis and assessment.

[学科分类] 卫生学