Respond to at least two of your colleagues who were assigned to a different case than you. Explain how you might apply knowledge gained from your colleagues’ case studies to you own practice in clinical settings. If your colleagues’ posts influenced your understanding of these concepts, be sure to share how and why. Include additional insights you gained. If you think your colleagues might have misunderstood these concepts, offer your alternative perspective and be sure to provide an explanation for them. Include resources to support your perspective. Case #29 The depressed man who thought he was out of options. The patient is a 69-year-old male with unremitting chronic depression. He has suffered from depressive episodes for 40 years and has always had a good response to treatment until 5 years ago when he relapsed on venlafaxine. Two years ago, he underwent nine treatments of ECT with partial response. He has tried every known antidepressant and augmentation available in the past few years. The patient should be asked about recent stressful life events, consumption of illicit drugs, alcohol abuse, current medical conditions and prescribed medications (Preda, 2018). If the patient was in my office, I would also want to ask questions to gain an understanding of the severity of his depression. It is important to assess the overall severity of depression symptoms because symptom severity corelates with suicide risk (Preda, 2018). The PHQ-9 screening could be used, and this screening asks about feelings of hopelessness, loss of pleasure in doing things, and feelings of being better off dead. A focused severity assessment for hopelessness, suicidal ideation, and psychotic symptoms is recommended; these symptoms independently increase the risk for suicide (Preda, 2018). This patient reports feeling severely depressed and demoralized, as well as, helplessness, hopelessness, and worthlessness. His depression is the worst it has ever been. Family members are helpful informers, they can ensure medication compliance, and can encourage patients to change behaviors that continue depression (Halverson, 2019). Some questions I would ask family members would include whether the patient is taking their medication and I would ask the family to provide some insight as to how the patient behaves at home. The wife reports that she feels he is letting go and giving up. There are no lab tests that will confirm depressive disorder, however, labs can be ordered to rule out illnesses that may present as depressive disorder such as endocrinological or neurological diseases. Labs tests may include TSH, B12, RPR, HIV test, electrolytes, BUN and creatinine, blood alcohol, and blood and urine toxicology screening. Neuroimaging can help clarify the nature of the neurologic illness that may produce psychiatric symptoms, but these studies are costly and may be of questionable value in patients without discrete neurologic deficits (Halvers.