[Assessment of a distant collaborative program for the treatment of depression in primary care]

In the treatment of depression, primary care teams play an important role, whose effectiveness improves when inserted into a collaborative model of disease management.

To report the results of a clinical trial carried out to test the effectiveness of a collaborative program between primary health teams and specialists supported by an electronic platform.

Physicians from four community hospitals belonging to the Reloncavi Health Service network, recruited 81 patients with depression aged 37 to 43 years, 84% of whom were female. Participants were divided in an active group, which participated in the collaborative program and a control group, which received the usual care, according to the Ministry of Health'’s Guidelines for Depression. The main outcome was the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-I) score at three months of intervention.

Participants had an average of 29.6 points (95% CI: 27.6-31.6) in the BDI-I and 38% of them had a high suicide risk. There were no statistically significant baseline differences between active and control group. In the intervention group, the BDI-I score changed from 30.0 (95% CI 27.0 to 32.8) to 15.3 (95% CI 11.8 to 18.8). In the control group the score changed from 29.2 (95% CI: 26.4-31.9) points to 20.8 (95% CI 16.8 to 24.7). The decrease was significantly higher in the intervention groups.

A program of this kind may be useful to assist primary care teams in remote areas of the country to improve treatment outcomes for depression.