Publications by authors named "Ana Vilela Mendes"

Background: Depression is a common condition in older adults, being often detected and treated initially in primary care. Collaborative care models including, for example, task-shifting and stepped-care approaches have been investigated to overcome the current scarcity of strategies and trained mental health professionals to treat depression. The PROACTIVE study developed a psychosocial intervention, which makes extensive use of technology in an intervention delivered mainly by non-specialists to treat older adults with depression.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: There is a considerable shortfall in specialized health care professionals worldwide to deliver health services, and this shortfall is especially pronounced in low-middle-income countries. This has led to the implementation of task-shifted interventions, in which specific tasks are moved away from highly qualified health workers to health workers with less training. The World Health Organization (WHO) has published recommendations for such interventions, but guidelines for software and systems supporting such interventions are not included.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Depression is a common and recurrent condition among older adults and is associated with poor quality of life and increased health care utilization and costs. The purpose of this pilot study was to assess the feasibility of delivering a psychosocial intervention targeting depression, and to develop the procedures to conduct a cluster randomized controlled trial among older adults registered with primary care clinics in poor neighbourhoods of São Paulo, Brazil.

Methods: We conducted a pilot study of a two-arm cluster, non-randomized controlled trial.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • A new study highlights the urgent need for research on childhood mental health problems in developing countries, specifically focusing on Brazilian school-age children.
  • It found that about 45.8% of the 120 children evaluated were diagnosed with at least one mental disorder, with those suffering from depressive and generalized anxiety disorders exposed to more risk factors.
  • The findings emphasize the importance of addressing chronic familial risk factors as potential targets for preventing anxiety and depressive disorders in children.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: To carry out a systematic review of the association between maternal and school-age children depression and covariate factors.

Design And Methods: The key words maternal depression, depressed children, and school-age key words were searched in Medline, Lilacs, Scielo, IndexPsi, and PsycInfo (2004-2010). Clinical and community cross-sectional and longitudinal studies were included.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: This study aimed to assess the discriminative validity of the Brazilian version of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and of its reduced version (PHQ-2).

Design And Methods: The sample consisted of 177 women (60 cases of depression and 117 noncases). The SCID-IV was used as the gold standard.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF