A new study found that the majority of cancer patients with clinical depression doesn't receive therapy or other forms of treatment.

Study author Jane Walker worked with her colleagues from the University of Oxford in England in studying the data of 21,000 participants diagnosed with different types of cancers. About eight percent of the participants were diagnosed with clinical depression; the majority of them, or 1,130 patients, said that they did not receive any treatment.

Depression, when ignored or untreated properly, can aggravate the symptoms of cancer such as pain, fatigue, anxiety, and the overall wellness of the patient. About 73 percent of the depressed cancer patients involved in the study also showed higher suicidal tendencies and reduced cooperation with their treatment plans.

As the researchers continued their analysis, the research team looked into the medical records of cancer patients from three different centers in Scotland. They took a sample of 26,570 patients out of 4 million data. About 80 percent of the subjects were diagnosed with depression with eight percent of them considered major. The researchers measured the depression levels of the participants using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale as well as the Structural Clinical Interview for DSM-IV.

Depression was found to be more prevalent in women who experienced social isolation. Lung cancer patients showed the highest rate of depression at 13 percent, followed by those with gynecologic cancer at 11 percent. Only 27 percent of the participants said they were given intervention or treatment.

"Perhaps our most important finding was that most cancer outpatients with depression were not in receipt of potentially effective treatment for their depression," the authors said to MedPage Today. "Although undertreatment of major depression has previously been reported for the general population, and for those who self-reported a diagnosis of cancer when asked in a survey, the undertreatment of patients attending specialist cancer services is especially concerning."

Further details of this study were published in the Aug.30 issue of the Lancet Psychiatry.