Clinicians Develop New Rating Scale for Perimenopausal Depression

Key differences in depressive symptoms that arise during perimenopause (the period immediately before menopause) suggest that perimenopausal depression may be a distinct subtype of depression, but scales to measure or monitor symptoms of perimenopausal depression are lacking. Areport published yesterday inTranslational Psychiatry describes the development and validation of a questionnaire that clinicians or patients can use to rate the severity of perimenopausal depression symptoms.“Having a reliable tool to aid in the diagnosis of perimenopausal depression is very important in research of this relatively neglected area of women’s health,” wrote Jayashiri Kulkarni, M.D., and colleagues at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. “Clinically, it is very important to a ccurately detect and diagnose perimenopausal depression as early as possible to enable more specific treatments, such as hormone treatment strategies.”Kulkarni and colleagues conducted an extensive literature review and relied on clinical observation and focus groups (including perimenopausal women and clinicians) to identify key perimenopausal depression symptom areas. From this research, they created a 12-item questionnaire, called the Meno-D, which asked patients to rate the severity of the following symptoms on a scale of 0 to 4: anxiety, concentration, energy, irritability, isolation, memory, paranoia, self-esteem, sexual interest, sleep, somatic symptoms, and weight changes.The Meno-D was then a...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: anxiety concentration energy irritability isolation Jayashiri Kulkarni memory Meno-D paranoia perimenopausal depression sexual interest sleep Translational Psychiatry weight Source Type: research