Quality Improvement in Nursing Homes: Identifying Depressed Residents is Critical to Improving Quality of Life.

Abstract

The prevalence of depression in nursing home residents is three to five times higher than in older adults from the community.1 Depression is thought to be related to the gloomy institutionalized environment and an assortment of losses, including those associated with function, independence, social roles, friends and relatives, and past leisure activities.2 Despite the public's increased awareness of depression, it remains underrecognized and undertreated by professionals who care for older residents in nursing homes.3 It seems intuitive that depression must be recognized before it can be treated, yet our national long-term care system continues to utilize an unreliable scale from the Minimum Data Set as its foundation for assessment. Warnings of the scale's inadequacy have been sounded repeatedly almost since its conception4,5 and its potential role in lack of recognition and treatment of depression by nursing home staff, nurse practitioners, and physicians is a troubling one.The purpose of this article is to (1) report the prevalence of depression in a sub-sample of residents from a National Institutes of Health study whose depression was not detected by the MDS and, consequently, was previously untreated, (2) compare their nutritional and functional status with residents whose depressive states were previously detected by the MDS and treated, and (3) recommend quality improvement strategies for identification and treatment of depression in nursing home residents.