Assessing and Treating Vulnerable Populations for Depressive Disorders

As a PMHNP working with vulnerable patient populations, you must be able to assess whether these symptoms are caused by psychological, social, or underlying growth and development issues. You must then be able recommend appropriate therapies.

As you examine antidepressant therapies, you explore the assessment and treatment of vulnerable patient populations. The focus of your assessment tool, a patient medication guide, will specifically center on one of the vulnerable populations of your choice. Please remember, you must also consider the ethical, legal, cultural, and social health determinant implications of these therapies.

To prepare:

• Review the Medication Resources included for this assignment. (on page 3 below)
• Reflect on the psychopharmacologic treatments you might recommend for the assessment and treatment of vulnerable patient populations requiring antidepressant therapy.

Assignment (5 pages):

• Develop a patient medication guide for treatment of depressive disorders in a vulnerable population (your choice for one vulnerable patient population to choose from: children, adolescents, older adults, dementia patients, pregnant women or one not listed of your choice!). Be sure to use language appropriate for your audience (patient, caregiver, parent, etc.).
• Include non-copyright images and/or information tables to make your patient medication guide interesting and appealing.
• Limit your patient medication guide to 5 pages. You will create this guide as an assignment; therefore, a title page, introduction, conclusion, and reference page are required.
• You must include a minimum of 3 scholarly supporting resources outside of your course provided resources.

In your patient guide, include discussion on the following:

• Depressive disorder causes and symptoms
• How depression is diagnosed for the vulnerable population of your choice, why is this population considered vulnerable
• Medication treatment options including risk vs benefits; side effects; FDA approvals for the vulnerable population of your choice
• Medication considerations of medication examples prescribed (see last bullet item)
• What is important to monitor in terms of labs, comorbid medical issues with why important for monitoring
• Special Considerations (you must be specific, not general and address at least one for EACH category; you must demonstrate critical thinking beyond basics of HIPPA and informed consent!): legal considerations, ethical considerations, cultural considerations, social determinants of health
• Where to follow up in your local community for further information
• Provide 3 examples of how to write a proper prescription that you would provide to the patient or transmit to the pharmacy. 
• NOTE: Please use Resources/References not older than 5-years. (Late 2018/2019 – 2023)