New Tool Aims to Improve Measurement of Primary Care Depression Outcomes
By ScienceDaily
Primary care doctors have long been on the front lines of depression treatment. Depression is listed as a diagnosis for 1 in 10 office visits and primary care doctors prescribe more than half of all antidepressants.
Now doctors at the University of Michigan Health System have developed a new tool that may help family physicians better evaluate the extent to which a patient’s depression has improved.
The issue, the researchers explain, is that the official definition of when a patient’s symptoms are in remission doesn’t always match up with what doctors see in a real-world practice, especially for patients with mild to moderate symptoms. The study will be published in the upcoming issue of General Hospital Psychiatry.