The monitoring of longer term prescriptions of antidepressants: observational study in a primary care setting.

Background: There is little evidence to guide the frequency of review for patients taking antidepressants in the longer term.

Objectives: To measure the frequency with which patients on longer term courses of antidepressants have their treatment monitored in primary care and to identify patient characteristics associated with the frequency of monitoring.

Methods: A cohort of patients who were receiving antidepressants continuously for at least two years was identified from four general practices.

Psychometric properties of the Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology (QIDS-SR) in UK primary care.

It is widely believed that severity of depressive disorder should guide treatment selection and many guidelines emphasise this factor. The Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology (QID-SR16) is a self-complete measure of depression severity which includes all DSM-IV criterion symptoms for major depressive disorder. The object of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of the QIDS-SR16 in a primary care sample.

Differential item functioning of the HADS and PHQ-9: an investigation of age, gender and educational background in a clinical UK primary care sample.

Background: The Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) are commonly used measures in clinical practice and research. It is important that such scales measure the trait they purport to measure and that the impact of other measurement artefacts is minimal. Differential item functioning of these scales by gender, educational background and age is currently assessed.

Measuring depression severity in general practice: discriminatory performance of the PHQ-9, HADS-D, and BDI-II.

Background: The UK Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) rewards practices for measuring symptom severity in patients with depression, but the endorsed scales have not been comprehensively validated for this purpose.

Aim: To assess the discriminatory performance of the QOF depression severity measures.

Design And Setting: Psychometric assessment in nine Scottish general practices.

Recognition and subsequent treatment of patients with sub-threshold symptoms of depression in primary care.

Background: Non-psychiatric physicians are better at correctly ruling out depressive disorders than appropriately recognising them. However, given large numbers of non-depressed patients, a small percentage of false positives equates to a greater number of patients than the number of depressed patients that GPs fail to detect. Concern thus arises that substantial numbers of patients with falsely identified depression may receive inappropriate interventions.

Appropriateness of antidepressant prescribing: an observational study in a Scottish primary-care setting.

Background: Since the 1990s, Scottish community-based antidepressant prescribing has increased substantially.

Aim: To assess whether GPs prescribe antidepressants appropriately.

Design Of Study: Observational study of adults (aged >/=16 years) screened with the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) attending a GP.

Psychometric comparison of PHQ-9 and HADS for measuring depression severity in primary care.

Background: The 2004 National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines highlight the importance of assessing severity of depression in primary care.

Aim: To assess the psychometric properties of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and the depression subscale of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS-D) for measuring depression severity in primary care.

Design Of Study: Psychometric assessment.