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Depressed Parents Will Be Focus Of Depression Screening Day

This year’s National Depression Screening Day, which will be held on October 9, will focus on screening parents for depression and encouraging those with depression to speak openly with their children about the illness and its treatment.

Screening and treatment for depression in parents is a new focal point for this year’s National Depression Screening Day (NDSD). The campaign is titled "Can a Depressed Parent be a Good Parent? You Bet!"

Screening for Mental Health Inc., a nonprofit agency based in Massachusetts, has organized NDSD each year since 1991.

The event is held at 6,000 screening sites throughout the United States and Canada, and its goal is to help to identify people with mood disorders, such as depression and bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder; educate the public about psychiatric illnesses; and combat the stigma surrounding them.

This year’s NDSD will take place on October 9, and as part of the new campaign, a new brochure will be distributed to NDSD screening sites urging parents to seek help for depression and talk openly with their children about depression and treatment. The brochure also advises parents with depression to make sure that their children don’t blame themselves for the depression and to explain that they are seeking treatment in order to get better.

The campaign and brochure are based on an intervention developed by William Beardslee, M.D., psychiatrist in chief at Children’s Hospital in Boston and the Gardner Monks professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, as described in his book, Out of the Darkened Room: When a Parent Is Depressed—Protecting the Children and Strengthening the Family.

It is not uncommon, he added, for many parents with depression to be self-critical and worry that their children will be adversely affected by their depression.

He suggested that parents speak openly about depression and treatment with children to increase their understanding about the illness and "build resilience in children by encouraging them to be involved in friendships and activities outside the home."

Said Douglas Jacobs, M.D., the founder and executive director of Screening for Mental Health Inc., "Our message is that by seeking treatment, parents can feel better themselves and help their whole family . . . . This will resonate with a lot of people, and NDSD has always been about finding a way to connect people with available services."

Those interested in providing screening on National Depression Screening Day must register by downloading a form at the Web site www.mentalhealthscreening.org or by calling (718) 239-0071. Registration fees are $150 for most private sites, $50 for public-sector sites, and free for primary care screening sites.

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