Depression researcher receives American award

When a depression is accompanied by hallucinations or delusions, often with a depressive theme, then the pathological picture is termed psychotic depression. For example, in a case where a depressed, but otherwise completely healthy person, insists that they are going to die of cancer and believe they can see a tumour growing in their stomach, or when a thrifty and well-off pensioner with depression maintains that the cause of the global financial crisis was their own extravagant spending.

Working as a newly qualified doctor in the psychiatric field, Søren Dinesen Østergaard became aware of the fact that there was not a method to measure the severity of psychotic depression. The severity of mental disorders is measured by a specialist evaluating each symptom following a structured interview with the patient and then giving a score on a fixed scale depending on the severity. When the scores from the individual symptoms are added together, the resulting number expresses the overall severity of the disease. This method of measurement is called a "rating scale".

"Something is clearly missing when it comes to working with this group of very ill patients. The risk of suicide in connection with psychotic depression is quite high, especially because of the delusions. That is why it is extremely important to be aware of the severity of these patients' symptoms," he explains.

Global interest in the scale

As a part of his PhD project at Aarhus University, Søren Dinesen Østergaard developed the first rating scale for psychotic depression, which has been named "The Psychotic Depression Assessment Scale (PDAS)". This is the work for which he is now being honoured by the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology with the "New Investigator Award", which is given to particularly promising young researchers.

"I am very pleased to receive the award, especially because it gives me an opportunity to meet American colleagues at the award presentation at the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology's annual meeting in June. This is a very good opportunity to expand the use of PDAS in the USA," he says.

The English original version of PDAS, which has been developed by Søren Dinesen Østergaard in collaboration with a number of colleagues from North American university hospitals, is currently in the process of being translated into Danish, Dutch, Turkish, Korean, Japanese and Tamil.

"I am very pleased to see that clinicians from other countries have already shown interest in the scale. This means that it is on the way out to the hospitals where it will benefit patients suffering from psychotic depression. And that was the whole idea with the project from the outset," says Søren Dinesen Østergaard, who is currently employed as an assistant professor at the Department of Clinical Medicine, while his day-to-day work takes place at Aarhus University Hospital in Risskov, Aarhus.

Further information

MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Søren Dinesen Østergaard
Aarhus University, Department of Clinical Medicine and
Unit for Psychiatric Research, Aarhus University Hospital, Risskov
Telephone: +45 6128 2753
Email: soeoes@rm.dk

Read more about The Psychotic Depression Assessment Scale