|
Often, primary care physicians are first line treatment for depression yet studies evaluating the adequacy of antidepressant treatment have been conducted only on small samples. Researchers from the department of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital decided to look at all outpatients at an academic medical center who received antidepressants. They conducted a retrospective study of 1550 patients over a 4 year period.
Results show that approximately 46 percent of the patients receiving antidepressants received minimally adequate treatment. The rates of adequate treatment were significantly higher among patients whose antidepressant prescriptions were written by both primary care physicians and psychiatrists than among patients whose antidepressants were prescribed solely by primary care physicians (61 percent versus 31 percent). Patients who had trials of SSRIs had significantly higher rates of treatment adequacy than those who had trials of tricyclic antidepressants but not SSRIs (51 percent compared with 27 percent) or trials with other antidepressants only (24 percent).
The study suggests that adequacy of treatment was more dependent on the duration of treatment rather than the dosage of medications and consistent with previous research, treatment involving SSRIs had a significantly higher adequacy rate than trials that did not include SSRIs.
Psychiatr Serv 54:1233-1239, September 2003
11:58:47 PM 
|
