Quality of life, diagnosis, and treatment of patients with major depression: a prospective cohort study in primary care

• Autor(a) principal: Lima,Ana Flávia Barros da Silva
• Data de Publicação: 2011
• Outros Autores: Fleck,Marcelo Pio de Almeida
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Brazilian Journal of Psychiatry (São Paulo. 1999. Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1516-44462011000300007
• topic: Quality of life; Diagnosis; Depressive disorder, major; Primary health care; Signs and symptoms

OBJECTIVE: To describe the demographic and clinical characteristics, adequacy of antidepressant treatment, and changes in quality of life of patients with major depression receiving follow-up care from primary care centers. METHOD: A cohort study was performed in which major depression patients were followed-up over a nine-month period. Several evaluation instruments were used, including the World Health Organization Quality of Life and the Quality of Life-Depression, Centers for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression questionnaires. RESULTS: The sample comprised 179 individuals, mostly female (73%), with a mean age of 38 years and mean education of 9 years. At the end of the follow-up period, 42% of the individuals still presented with major depression, 25% had complete symptom remission, and only 9% were properly treated with antidepressants. In relation to quality of life, there were significant differences especially between baseline and after nine months in almost all measures. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrated that depressive symptoms are poorly recognized and that treatment is often inadequate for patients followed-up in primary care units in the south of Brazil. Most of the patients continued to have symptoms of depression over the nine-month period which were associated with impaired quality of life.