PROMDEP

We want to look at whether giving personal feedback to people being treated for depression might help them get better more quickly. One way of doing this is by using patient reported outcome measures (or 'PROMs') which involve patients filling out questionnaires to record their symptoms of depression and feeding back the questionnaire results to the health professionals looking after them, at follow-up appointments. Some benefit for patients from reduced depression has been shown to result from monitoring their progress with PROMs, at least in specialist psychological therapy and mental health settings.

In a previous study in general practices in southern England between 2014 and 2016, lower levels of depression symptoms were found at 12 weeks follow-up among patients who used PROMs at follow-up assessment, suggesting that completing them may improve the outcome of depression treatment for patients. However, this approach has not yet been researched properly in UK general practices.

General practice is the setting in which most people with depression are treated in the UK, so it's important to test whether PROMs can be helpful in that setting.

Local Investigators: Michael Moore, Geraldine Leydon, Beth Stuart, Adam Geraghty, Gareth Griffiths, Rachel Dewar-Haggart, Samantha Williams

Study team: Dr Rachel Dewar-Haggart, Miss Natalie Thompson, Dr Lien Bui

Contact: PROMDEP@soton.ac.uk

This project is being conducted by the Primary Care Research Centre