Diagnosis and Treatment of Depression in Patients with Hypertension

Objective To investigate the prevalence of depression in the patients with hypertension and to offer the basis for the psychological intervention to hypertension.Method Clinical trial was conducted to compare the efficacy and the adverse reactions between the treatment group(routine therapy+doxepine) and the control group(routine therapy).Depression was diagnosed according to DSM-Ⅳ criteria and the severity of depressive symptoms was evaluated with the Zung Depression Scale.The patients were followed up for 12 weeks.Results The prevalence of depression was 18.68%(34/182) in hypertension;the effective number in the treatment group was 12/16;the mean Zung scores and hypertension scores descended significantly after the treatment in the treatment group(P0.001 vs control group).The level of blood pressure in the treatment group was significantly lower than that in control group(P0.05).Conclusions The prevalence of depression is high in patients with hypertension.Anti-depression therapy can improve the depressive and hypertensive symptoms effectively,and reduce the level of blood pressure in hypertension simultaneously.