Author: S.G. Burchinsky
State Institution «Institute of Gerontology named after A.I. D.F. Chebotareva NAMS of Ukraine», Kyiv
The problem of depression is currently one of the leading medical and social problems of modern society. According to various data (not taking into account a significant number of undiagnosed, masked, somatoform, and other variants), there are from 100 to 200 million patients with depression in the world [8, 10, 11, 13], and they experience at least one depressive episode in their life 20-25% of women and 7-12% of men. At the same time, one of the most important characteristics of depressive disorders at the present stage is their going beyond the limits of psychiatric pathology, an increase in the proportion of neurotic and somatogenic forms compared to classical endogenous depressions (mono- and bipolar disorders). Thus, at present, the proportion of non-psychotic forms in the overall structure of depressive pathology exceeds 60% [2]. This is the reason for the fact that in recent years an increasing number of such patients are turning not to a psychiatrist, but to a primary care doctor – a district therapist, or – in the case of somatogenic depression – to doctors of other specialties, but mostly to neurologists.