Factors Associated With Depressive Episode Recurrences in Primary Care: A Retrospective, Descriptive Study

Introduction and Objective: The early identification of depressive patients having a poor evolution, with frequent relapses and/or recurrences, is one of the priority challenges in this study of high prevalence mental disorders, and specifically in depression. So, this study aims to analyze the factors that may be associated with an increased risk of recurrence of major depression episodes in patients treated in primary care. Methods: A retrospective, descriptive study of cases-controls was proposed. The cases consisted of patients who had been diagnosed with major depression and who had presented recurrences (n = 101), in comparison with patients who had experienced a single major depression episode with no recurrence (n = 99). The variables of the study are age at first episode; number of episodes; perception of severity of the depression episode suffered prior to recurrence; number of residual symptoms; physical and psychiatric comorbidity; history of anxiety disorders; family psychiatric history; high incidence of stressful life events (SLEs); and experiences of physical, psychological, or sexual abuse in childhood. The differences of the variables were compared between the case subjects and the control subjects, using the Mann–Whitney, chi-square, and Fisher’s U statistics. A multivariate analysis (ordinary logistic regression) was performed. Results: The average age of those suffering more than one depressive episode is significantly older (5 years), and a higher percentage of subjects who have experienced more than one depressive episode have a history of anxiety disorders. In the multivariate analysis, the variables that obtained a significant value in the logistic regression analysis were age (OR: 1.03; value: 0.007) and having suffered sexual abuse during childhood (OR: 1.64; value: 0.072). Conclusion: These indicators should be considered by primary care physicians when attending patients suffering from major depression

Analysis of depressive episodes, their recurrence and pharmacologic treatment in primary care patients: A retrospective descriptive study

Background: Depression is one of the most prevalent health problems, frequently being a medium- and long-term condition, with a high comorbidity rate and with frequent relapses and recurrences. Although numerous studies have compared the effectiveness of specific antidepressant therapy drugs and have assessed relapses, scientific evidence on the relationship between pharmacologic treatments and recurrence is scarce. The objective of this study is to describe depressive episodes in a primary care patient cohort, the percentage of depression recurrences and the administered pharmacologic treatment, from a naturalistic perspective. Methods: Retrospective descriptive study. 957 subjects were included. The dependent variable was a depression diagnosis and independent variables were: gender, age at time of data collection; age of onset, first-episode treatment, number of recurrences, age at recurrences, treatment prescribed for recurrences using therapeutic groups categorization. Results: Recurrences are frequent, affecting more than 40% of the population. In the first episode, 13.69% of the patients were not prescribed pharmacological treatment, but this percentage decreased over the following depression episodes. 80.9% of the patients who did not receive drug treatment in the first depression episode did not experience subsequent episodes. Monotherapy, and specifically, SSRIs were the most frequently prescribed treatment option for all depressive episodes. Regards the combined pharmacologic treatment, the most frequent drug combinations were SSRIs and benzodiazepines. Limitations In order to increase the power of results, the statistical analysis was performed using therapeutic groups categorization, not individually analyzing each drug and dose. Conclusions: Depressive episode recurrence is frequent in primary care patients. Further studies having a prospective design are needed in order to expand on this issue

Corrigendum: Factors Associated With Depressive Episode Recurrences in Primary Care: A Retrospective, Descriptive Study (Frontiers in Psychology, (2020), 11, (1230), 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01230)

In the original article, we neglected to include the funder Feder Funds “Another way to make Europe”. The corrected funding statement appears below. The authors apologize for this error and state that this does not change the scientific conclusions of the article in any way. The original article has been updated. FUNDING This work was supported by Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII) grant number PI18/01336. The authors declare that this study received funding from Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII)— Feder Funds “Another way to make Europe”. The funder was not involved in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article or the decision to submit it for publication