Research Guides: Depression Grand Challenge: Depression in the Health Sciences

Depression in the Sciences

Depression is a physical and mental illness. Specifically, it's a mood disorder. In people with depression, physical changes in brain function and structure are associated with psychological symptoms.
Depression can take many forms. Individuals' symptoms vary, but people with depression generally have persistent and severe sad, anxious, or negative feelings that interfere with their normal lives.
Depression is an active area of scientific research. Many different scientific fields contribute to the study of depression - psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, biochemistry, genetics, molecular biology, and more. Our current understanding suggests that depression has multiple complex biological, environmental, and psychological causes.
Depression can be treated. Most people with depression are treated with medication and/or psychotherapy.
Want to learn more? The National Institute of Mental Health is a great place to start.

Basic Information about Depression

DSM-5: Depressive Disorders
This link is limited to UCLA users.
The DSM-5 specifies classification and diagnostic criteria for psychiatry. Depressive disorders include disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, major depressive disorder (including major depressive episode), persistent depressive disorder (dysthymia), premenstrual dysphoric disorder, substance/medication-induced depressive disorder, depressive disorder due to another medical condition, other specified depressive disorder, and unspecified depressive disorder. The common feature of all of these disorders is the presence of sad, empty, or irritable mood, accompanied by somatic and cognitive changes that significantly affect the individual’s capacity to function. What differs among them are issues of duration, timing, or presumed etiology.
MedlinePlus - Depression
MedlinePlus contains basic consumer information about depression, plus links to more in-depth research. It also includes patient handouts in English and Spanish.

Books

Handbook of Depression by Edward S. Friedman; Ian Anderson
Call Number: Online (via Springer)
ISBN: 9781907673795
Date: 2014
This handbook gives an overview of the causes, classification, epidemiology, diagnosis, and treatment of depression.
The Oxford Handbook of Depression and Comorbidity by C. Steven Richards (Editor); Michael W. O'Hara (Editor)
Call Number: Online (via Oxford Handbooks Online)
ISBN: 9780199797004
Date: 2014
Depression is frequently associated with other psychiatric disorders and is often related to chronic health problems.

Highly Cited Journals with Depression Articles

Searching for Research Literature

PubMed This link opens in a new window
PubMed is a very large database with records for millions of articles. It's easy to get overwhelmed! A great way to start your research is to take advantage of PubMed's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). Try using the MeSH terms for Depression and/or Depressive Disorder along with other relevant MeSH terms or keywords for your research topic. You can browse for MeSH terms in the MeSH database. When you find one that you want to use, click the button on the right that says "Add to search builder." When you're finished adding MeSH terms to your search, you can search PubMed using the "Search PubMed" button. Getting too many results? Try going back to MeSH and checking the box that says "Restrict to MeSH Major Topic." This will limit your search results to only the most relevant articles. Remember you can also use the filters on the left side of the PubMed results screen! Using the Article Type - Review filter is particularly helpful when you're starting your research.

Example PubMed searches:

If you type "ketamine depression" into the PubMed search box, you'll see over 1300 results. Many of them will be relevant, but you'll also run into many irrelevant results. For instance, ketamine is used in anesthesia, and you'll find it mentioned in the same abstract as a term like "respiratory depression" - which probably isn't what you're looking for.

MeSH will give you more targeted results. If we combine the MeSH terms for these two concepts like so: "Ketamine"[Mesh] AND ("Depressive Disorder"[Mesh] OR "Depression"[Mesh]) we narrow down the 1300+ results to only about 300. Want to restrict your search to even more specific, more targeted results? Instead of using the regular [Mesh] field, we can specify that we only want to see MeSH terms that are tagged as the MAJOR topic of an article - in other words, the concept isn't just discussed in the paper, it's the actual point of the research. If we restrict our MeSH search to only [Majr] topics, we narrow it down still further to about 230 results: "Ketamine"[Majr] AND ("Depressive Disorder"[Majr] OR "Depression"[Majr])

APA PsycInfo This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
PsycINFO contains records for articles related to the psychological, social, behavioral, and health sciences. To search for depression-related topics, try using the thesaurus (the link to the thesaurus is located above the search box on the advanced search screen). Typing "depression" into the thesaurus will allow you to explore the broad and specific subject headings available in PsycINFO. Check the ones that you wish to add to your search, and try combining them with other relevant terms for your research area (for instance, if you are researching depression in a certain population, try to find a thesaurus term for that particular population). Getting too many results? Checking the "Major" box for each term will return only the most relevant articles.

Measuring Depression

How do you determine who is depressed? Depression screening is an important method of identifying people who need mental health services support. Screening recommendations and instruments vary according to the population (pregnant women, older adults, children and adolescents, etc) and the screening environment (primary care clinic, oncology office, etc).

Health & Psychosocial Instruments (HAPI) This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
HAPI contains information about psychological and social instruments such as tests, scales, inventories, questionnaires, and other measurements in English and other languages. Start here if you're looking for a depression-related instrument. Please note that the instruments themselves are not included in the database, but you should be able to locate the instrument elsewhere using the information provided (the Biomedical Library does not collect instruments).

Depression in Southern California

Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health
The Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health is the largest county-operated mental health department in the United States, directly operating programs in more than 85 sites, and providing services via contract program and DMH staff at approximately 300 sites co-located with other County departments, schools, courts and other organizations.
California Health Interview Survey - AskCHIS
This tool lets you query results from the California Health Interview Survey. You can look at variables related to mental health and depression. It's free to create an account.

Bibliography

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