Depression overview – definitions, epidemiology, pathophysiology

This episode is a bit of new thing we’re trying – interviews with our friends! As we’ve progressed in our careers, we’ve all started specializing and become increasingly unqualified to talk about large swathes of medicine. On the flipside, our mates have done the same thing in all manner of interesting fields, so we’ve decided to start utilizing this amazing resource.

In this episode, Davor talks to senior psychiatry registrar Dean Whitty about depression. This episode is an overview of the Black Dog – definitions, burden of disease and pathophysiology. To be completely honest, only the first 20 minutes or so are directly clinically applicable. If you decide to stay onboard for the whole journey though, you’ll get Dean’s fascinating thoughts on whether you can make epidemiological conclusions across cultures, the different models of depression and how you might be able to unify them, as well the inherent tension between the biological and psychosocial approaches. We’re planning on following this one up with episodes on evaluation and management.