TY - JOUR T1 - A difficult combination: chronic physical illness, depression, and pain JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 440 LP - 441 DO - 10.3399/bjgp14X681241 VL - 64 IS - 626 AU - Karen Amanda Cocksedge AU - Chantal Simon AU - Rohit Shankar Y1 - 2014/09/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/64/626/440.abstract N2 - At present 41% of adult males and 43% of adult females report a long-term illness, and this figure is increasing as our population ages.1 Long-term conditions have been at the centre of UK health policy since the mid-1990s, and managing increasing numbers of people with increasingly complex long-term conditions within a limited healthcare budget is one of the major challenges currently facing the NHS, and in particular general practice.Overall, depression affects around 20% of patients who have a chronic physical health problem. This is two to three times the prevalence of depression in those with good physical health.2 Severity of depression is influenced by the number and severity of symptoms, as well as the degree of functional impairment.Patients with chronic disease together with depression tend to have poorer outcomes. For example, it has been shown that depression is a risk factor for increased morbidity and mortality in patients with diabetes, and that insulin resistance is more common in patients with diabetes and depression than diabetes alone.3 For … ER -