Learning about depression with psychiatrist Eduardo Colón
Dr. Eduardo Colon
Hey, everybody. Check out this fact: about 16 million people in the United States will experience an episode of depression every year. That’s about 7% of the population. By some estimates, depression is in the top 3 causes of disability (source: World Health Organization).
To help us learn a bit more about this condition, I asked my colleague Dr. Eduardo Colón to be my in-studio guest on last Sunday’s Healthy Matters broadcast. It was a great show! Dr. Colón is the Chief of Psychiatry at HCMC and he has been on the show a few times over the years. This is terrific since you will not find a wiser and kinder psychiatrist than he. I really encourage you to listen to the podcast so you can hear Dr. Colón explain things much better than I can in this written form.
You can learn more about Dr. Colón from this Minneapolis Star Tribune article which appeared shortly after he was named Chief of Psychiatry. He gives an insider perspective on mental health care in our community that is worth a read.
I’ll use this blog post as a written companion of sorts for the audio podcast of that radio show. I’ll try to encapsulate a few topics from the show and include some links for more information.
First of all, download the audio podcast here to listen to whenever you want. Once at the podcast site, select Healthy Matters show #475, February 11, 2018).
Podcasts
A wealth of information on depression
Here’s what Dr. Colón covered on the show, and you can click the links to jump to specific topics that interest you.
- How common is depression?
- How is depression diagnosed?
- What is seasonal affective disorder?
- What are treatments for depression?
- Brief comments about suicide. Includes crucial link to suicide assistance.
- Can depression be treated by primary care doctors or is a psychiatrist needed?
- The stigmatization of depression. This section includes a link to a powerful short essay by a medical student that I highly recommend you read.
- Depression and stressors in relationships in our political environment.
- Social media and depression.
- How to distinguish normal grief from clinical depression.
- Is there a hereditary risk for depression?
- Is there a link between acne medications and depression?
- How to get help for people in your life who may have depression. Important link to NAMI in this section.
- Does having money protect you from depression?
- Can you ever stop depression medications? If a maximum dose of an anti-depressant doesn’t work, what then?
- Is there a link between depression and heart problems?
Quick tips: influenza, angina, kidneys, & blood pressure
Hi, everybody. I’m back with one of these “Quick tips” posts where I answer questions that were sent to me on a recent Healthy Matters radio broadcast. Regular listeners will know that I never can get to all of the questions, particularly those sent by text message, so I will try here to do some brief answers. I’ll keep it to just a few topics, and will do more posts in the near future.
Here are the topics in this post. Click the links to jump right to a specific topic.
- Influenza. How long are you contagious? What does it look like on a chest x-ray?
- ACE-inhibitors and high blood pressure.
- Kidney disease and protein in the urine.
- What is angina?
As always, I invite you to listen to the Healthy Matters broadcasts, either live or via podcast. Here are ways to listen:
- Live on News Radio 830 WCCO on your AM dial. Sunday mornings, 7:30 Central Time. You’d be surprised how far the WCCO signal reaches from our downtown Minneapolis studios.
- Live on WCCO.COM. Sunday mornings, 7:30 Central Time, from anywhere on Earth with Internet
- At your convenience, via podcast. Simply click on the “Listen to Podcasts” link right here on MyHealthyMatters.org or go directly to WCCO.COM on the “Audio” link and find Healthy Matters. You can listen directly online or you can download the podcast to your phone, tablet, or computer and listen anytime at your own convenience. Without commercials!
- Or just click the logo here:
Podcasts
Do you need an annual physical?
I’m a doctor (duh). I do annual physicals sometimes (duh, again). But I recently was put in the position of debating another doctor – on live radio – about whether or not the annual physical is doing anybody any good.
Of course, physicals help people to, well, stay healthy. Right? Not so fast! This isn’t as simple a question as it may seem.
Do people really need an annual physical?
The big debate occurred about a couple weeks ago when I was asked to be on Southern California Public Radio, KPCC 89.3 FM out of Los Angeles. I was on the long-running show AirTalk®, hosted by Larry Mantle. It was set up as a “pro vs. con” debate between me and a physician-researcher from Harvard, Dr. Ateev Mehrotra. Dr. Mehrotra has done a great bit of research on just such topics.
I invite you to listen to the audio segment from SoCal Public Radio. It’s about 18 minutes long, and you can access it from their website, KPCC.ORG, under the AirTalk® section. It ran on Wednesday, January 17, 2018 so go to that date in the archives and scroll to the bottom. read more…
