Although it is understandable, and probably even wise, to take BBC Health journalism with a few kilograms of salt, they've really set a new bench mark today for rapidity of self contradiction.
Today's article contains much bleating about the WHO's recent 'statement of the bleeding obvious' that depressed people are more likely to suffer physical illness and experience poorer health outcomes, particularly if they also have a chronic condition such as diabetes.
The BBC in their ceaseless and untiring quest for objective and balanced comment in the public interest have decided that this is best achieved by busting down the door of the nearest single issue pressure group they could find, generating the following soundbite:
Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the mental health charity SANE, said: "We now have yet more evidence, as if it were needed, of the destructive and life-threatening effects of depression, which this global study shows can be an even greater danger than many chronic physical conditions.
"Yet even in developed countries like our own, proper diagnosis and appropriate treatment can be patchy at best."
What they fuck?!!?!?
Less than a month ago, they we're reporting about depression being over diagnosed!
Dr Rant is more in accordance with the earlier opinion. Depression certainly isn't under diagnosed in UK general practice, and indeed screening for depression in people with chronic illness has been in our contract for several years. That is unless of course, we as GPs are to blame for not diagnosing depression in depressed people who don't actually come to see us now.
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10 comments:
the BBC is loosing the plot
you only had to listen to the interview with Ben the chairman of BT on the today programme this morning
they allowed him to trot out all his own spin and totally failed to challenge him about any of the fires burining in BT while he is off fiddling abroad
i fully expect the next Enron chairman to be shown to have been treated mildly by the press until the big bang when it all colapses and the jornos all have selective memory
and yep on medicine they fire in allsorts of random directions, but mostly toe the government spin far too much
medicine is way overdue a "fly on the wall" style programme, of the kind that exposes dodgy builders, used on some GPs and dentists in this country, for example
i think partly the reason the govt is able to get away with such shit health provision in this country is because they can manipulate the likes of the bbc, and its a non issue for murdoch and friends
come the day one of murdochs friends dies of crap service in UK A & E you watch how things start to change
Anon i wish you would piss off.
why?
so you can all bullshit to each other about how great the country will be when its run by medics
how socialist principals will save our health like they have failed all our other businesses?
i dont think so
its not a dictatorship
Anonymous said...
Anon i wish you would piss off.
:) could people try to use consistent pseudonyms?
I get fed up with Marjorie Wallace being trotted out for a quotation on any mental health story in the media. It's not just the BBC that does it, the newspapers do it as well.
I've complained to the BBC about it more than once. There are plenty of interest groups out there, and in this case, there are more relevant ones, as often there are when she's quoted.
Maybe this is good investigative journalism.
Maybe they've sussed the sensitivity and specificity of GP's diagnosis of depression and feel there are too many false positives (last month, over diagnosing) and too few true positives (as you miss everyone with depression).
Thus, it's still the fault of GPs!
Or maybe they've just messed up. Again.
Depression seems to be found, treated (and if not improving then referred) pretty well by GPs in my neck of the woods. I know no colleagues who work with a slew of 'bad' GPs. Makes you wonder where the 'dab' GPs are who are being bashed . . .
Anonymous, I doubt if Murdoch has any friends.
Sycophants, and yes men perhaps........
Incidentally the majority of patients who 'die in A&E' are usually dead before they ever reach hospital.
And as you know with 4minute target, the rest aren't in A&E long enough for death to be pronounced ;-)
I think all this started in this week's Lancet. Huge amount on depression and its ill effects on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
It's all rather sad really...and there's a lot of it about...and my prozac has run out. Serotonin deficient world...I'm really concerned about it...should be in the water...obviously.
"All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?"
Apparently anywhere and everywhere in the known universe. If we meet aliens we might have to screen them for depression too!
The BBC has been demonstrably shit for some time. Best avoided.
On the subject of names I quite agree with Jayann, why do so many people post as ‘anonymous’ it just gets confusing.
Socialist Anonymous, could you not even use ‘The Anonymous’ as a name, you don’t even need to log in.
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