Increasing the Efficiency of Depression-screening Using Patient-targeted Feedback

Overview

Out-patients with coronary heart disease or hypertension will fill out a depression screening questionnaire while waiting in a cardiac clinic. Using a randomised-controlled study design half of the patients will receive a patient-targeted written screening feedback. This feedback contains information about depression in general, depression-severity adapted treatment guidelines and contact-information for treatment. Patients in the control group receive no direct screening-feedback but their cardiologist will be informed about the screening result. All patients with a positive screening-result will be contacted after one month and six months and asked for symptoms of depression, and their use of health care. The aim of this study is to evaluate the efficiency of this minimal intervention on the course of depressive symptom in patients with known coronary heart disease or hypertension.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the efficiency of a minimal intervention on the course of depressive symptoms in patients with known coronary heart disease (CHD) or hypertension. By means of a depression screening and individual patient-targeted feedback the level of depression should decrease, the percentage of treated depressed patients should increase and health economic costs should be lowered. The main hypothesis is that screening plus targeted feedback results in a greater reduction of depression than screening only.

Conditions