Learning Objective
In this section, you will learn why patients undergoing treatment for hepatitis C are at an increased risk for depression and discover several best practices and helpful flowcharts for managing mental illness in your treatment program. Your goal for this section should be to get a general overview of the course content. As we treat the two patients, you will explore the material in closer detail.

Why do I need this course?
Depression is a very common and often serious psychiatric illness. It affects close to 10% of the U.S. population at any one time. In hepatitis C patients, rates of depression are estimated to exceed 20%, and depressive symptoms are even more common during interferon therapy.

The impact of depression is significant. I have seen patients' quality of life, participation in life, and medical care reduced significantly. Patients also suffer increased disability and increased utilization of medical services, morbidity, and mortality.

Depression is often responsible for serious problems, such as high patient drop out rates and-even worse-suicide. We need to learn to manage depression so that it does not compromise patient care and treatment of hepatitis C.