Nur Hani Zainal, Robert M Bossarte, Sarah M Gildea, Irving Hwang, Chris J Kennedy, Howard Liu, Alex Luedtke, Brian P Marx, Maria V Petukhova, Edward P Post, Eric L Ross, Nancy A Sampson, Erik Sverdrup, Brett Turner, Stefan Wager, Ronald C Kessler
Efforts to develop an individualized treatment rule (ITR) to optimize major depressive disorder (MDD) treatment with antidepressant medication (ADM), psychotherapy, or combined ADM-psychotherapy have been hampered by small samples, small predictor sets, and suboptimal analysis methods. Analyses of large administrative databases designed to approximate experiments followed iteratively by pragmatic trials hold promise for resolving these problems. The current report presents a proof-of-concept study using electronic health records (EHR) of n = 43,470 outpatients beginning MDD treatment in Veterans Health Administration Primary Care Mental Health Integration (PC-MHI) clinics, which offer access not only to ADMs but also psychotherapy and combined ADM-psychotherapy...
March 14, 2024: Molecular Psychiatry