Coordinated Treatment of Depression in Elderly People in Primary Care

Depression in the elderly is mainly treated by primary care physicians; the treatment is often suboptimal because of the limited resources available in pri- mary care. New models of care in which treatment by a primary care physician is supplemented by the provision of brief, low-threshold interventions mediated by care managers are showing themselves to be a promising approach.

In this open, cluster-randomized, controlled study, we sought to determine the superiority of a model of this type over the usual form of treatment by a primary care physician. Patients in primary care aged 60 and above with moderate depres- sive manifestations (PHQ-9: 10-14 points) were included in the study. The primary endpoint was the percentage of patients in remission (score <5 on the Patient Health Questionnaire, PHQ-9) after the end of the intervention (12 months after baseline). The study was registered in the German Clinical Studies Registry (Deutsches Register für Klinische Studien) with the number DRKS00003589.

71 primary care physicians entered 248 patients in the study, of whom 109 were in the control group and 139 in the intervention group. In an intention-to-treat analysis, the remission rate at 12 months was 25.6% (95% confidence interval [18.3; 32.8]) in the intervention group and 10.9% [5.4; 16.5]) in the control group (p = 0.004).

This study demonstrates the superiority of the new care model in the primary care setting in Germany, as has been found in other countries.