Aligning Depression Treatment to Patient Need Leads to Efficient Care, Study Shows

Depression looks different in every person, making it a challenge to ensure that each receives the appropriate care. Many patients get treatment too intensive for their condition while others don’t get enough.

Taking into account five predictive indicators, including severity of depression, hostility level, introversion, sleep problems and unemployment status, researchers Lorenzo Lorenzo-Luaces and Robert DeRubeis produced a statistical indexing tool that can help identify those most in need of an intensive treatment like cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT.

The researchers found that, in terms of depression recovery rates approximately two years after treatment, those with worse prognoses, as indicated by their scores on the risk index, saw the strongest results from CBT. Those with better prognoses or fewer risk factors saw no differences between CBT and two less-intensive treatments. 

“We’re used to thinking that someone who meets the criteria for major depression needs the most intense treatment,” says Lorenzo-Luaces, a sixth-year doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychology, “but there is actually substantial variability in how people will do over time. A lot of people may not need a treatment for as long or as intensely as we seem to think, but a select group really seems to benefit from CBT.”

The researchers published their findings in the Journal of Affective Disorders.

To reach these conclusions, Lorenzo-Luaces and DeRubeis, the Samuel H. Preston Term Professor in the Social Sciences, looked closely at data from a study conducted by Dutch researchers Annemieke van Straten and Bea Tiemens, who also co-authored the new paper.

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