Comorbid mental disorders, depression symptom severity, and role impairment among Veterans initiating depression treatment through the Veterans Health Administration.

Background: Psychiatric comorbidities may complicate depression treatment by being associated with increased role impairments. However, depression symptom severity might account for these associations. Understanding the independent associations of depression severity and comorbidity with impairments could help in treatment planning.

Treatment Differences in Primary and Specialty Settings in Veterans with Major Depression.

Introduction: The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) supports the nation's largest primary care-mental health integration (PC-MHI) collaborative care model to increase treatment of mild to moderate common mental disorders in primary care (PC) and refer more severe-complex cases to specialty mental health (SMH) settings. It is unclear how this treatment assignment works in practice.

Methods: Patients (n = 2610) who sought incident episode VHA treatment for depression completed a baseline self-report questionnaire about depression severity-complexity.