Measurement-based care in the personalized treatment of depression in general practice

Patients with a depression generally receive personal psychological support and advice from their general practitioner (GP) and mental health nurse (MHN). In addition, an antidepressant can be prescribed or a patient can be referred to mental health care. During follow-up by the GP/GP-MHN, there is typically no structured monitoring of depressive complaints, functioning, or the achievement of treatment goals. This can potentially lead to suboptimal treatment and uncertainty for GPs and patients.

Improving quality of care and treatment results

The quality of care and treatment results can be improved, by regularly feeding back the course of the depression to the patient and GP/GP-MHN with the help of Measurement Based Care (MBC).

Aim

In this project we will therefore develop, implement and evaluate MBC through eHealth monitoring for depression in general practice. They will study the effect of this intervention in a cluster-randomized trial with MBC as an addition to treatment according to the NHG-guideline depression.

Related ZonMw project

This project is related to, and partially a follow-up of, the project Measurement-based care in personalized lifestyle interventions (PLI) for depression symptomatology in general practice (information on this project is only available in Dutch).