Objective: This study describes treatment patterns, productivity, healthcare resource utilization and previous episodes of depression for patients with treatment-resistant depression (TRD).
Methods: In this cross-sectional study, a quantitative survey was administered to 225 healthcare providers (HCPs) distributed evenly across Germany, France and the UK from July to August 2021. Each HCP was asked to answer based on medical records of five patients with TRD, defined as patients failing to respond to two or more treatments of adequate dose and duration in the same episode of major depressive disorder (MDD), which provided a sample size of 1125 patients.
Results: Of the 1125 patients with TRD, 73.2% had two or more previous episodes of MDD, 46.3% had a history of suicidal ideation and 24.8% had attempted suicide. Only 26.8% of patients were employed either full-time or part-time. During the most recent/current TRD episode, 45.5% of patients received five or more lines of treatment, and 46.0% remained on monotherapy. For multiple pharmacological treatments, too many distinct combinations were used to discern trends. Overall, 60.6% of patients had at least one mental health-related hospitalization in the last 12 months; 35.0% had two or more hospitalizations. Half of TRD patients saw a doctor five or more times per year for their depression.
Conclusions: This study addresses the knowledge gap about treatment patterns and healthcare utilization in real-world practice for TRD patients in three European countries. It provides data that potentially could inform treatment guideline development and optimize patient-perceived benefits from the treatment of TRD.
Keywords: Treatment-resistant depression; mental health; mental healthcare professionals; patient record forms; real-world data; treatment patterns.