Depression and Renal Pathology: Literature Review and Perspectives for Intervention

Depression in patients affected by renal disease is a relevant problem because it is related to a increase of death and hospitalization rate and to a reduction of compliance. The pharmacological treatments result to be the best therapy of choice, however there is a greater difficulty in treating depressive symptoms that occur in comorbidity with renal disease, than when depression is the only disease. Various studies show that this problem can be addressed through an integrated pharmacological and psychotherapeutic intervention, which presents an additive effect in the treatment of this pathology. In relation to renal disease various studies suggest the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic intervention in the treatment of depressive symptoms, but more research is needed to compare the effectiveness of the different psychotherapeutic approaches.