Depression: An Integrative Approach (2024-2026)
Build on your integrative knowledge, in this course focused on addressing patients with depression. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in 2020, one in five adults in the US reported a diagnosis of depression by their health provider. Depression is a major contributor to morbidity, mortality, and economic cost. It cuts across socioeconomic boundaries, race, age, and gender and is associated with serious comorbidities such as cardiovascular disease, obesity, chronic pain, diabetes, and substance abuse.
Within conventional practice, the combined use of antidepressant medications and psychotherapy has been considered the standard recommendation for the treatment of all patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). Increasingly, however, the reliance on medications has been questioned in the scientific literature.
For patients to have access to safe and evidence-based integrative approaches, a shift in focus and priorities of funding within the society as a whole are needed. Given the significant impact of depression on patients' lives, safer and more efficacious therapeutic approaches to depression are urgently needed, a fact that has lent momentum to the development of integrative approaches to this complex illness. Expand your ability to support your patients with an integrative approach to depression.
Learning Objectives
At the end of this course, participants will be able to:
- Describe the public health impact of depression, including suicide rates and disparities across age, gender, race, and geographic location.
- Discuss concerns related to medication-focused treatment of depression.
- Review etiological factors for depression.
- Identify symptoms of depression.
- List medical problems and disease states known to cause or are associated with depression.
- Identify medications with depression as potential adverse effects.
- Review conventional treatment approaches for depression.
- Assess the evidence for the safety and benefit of complementary and integrative approaches/practices in the treatment of depression.
- Assess the evidence for the safety and benefit of supplements and botanicals in the treatment of depression.
- Assess the evidence for the effects of lifestyle factors on depression.
- Apply and review integrative medicine approaches in a variety of patient cases with depression.
Curriculum
- Overview
- Treatment Approaches