ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about depression in the medically ill because it is the most common psychological disturbance associated with medical illness, and because it is often undetected and/or untreated. It focuses on depression does not convey the impression that the mental state associated with medical illness is necessarily gloomy or bleak. Depressed mood is a normal human response to the sense of injury, loss, uncertainty, and vulnerability that may be associated with a serious medical condition. In the majority of cases, depressive symptoms are not persistent and they subside when there has been sufficient time for psychological adaptation to the condition to take place. The occurrence of depression in the medically ill is most often the result of multiple biological and psychological stressors that may lead to depression depending upon such variables as the adaptive capacities of the individual, the premorbid propensity to depression, the social environment, and the nature and course of the medical condition.
