Use of a personalised depression intervention in primary care to prevent anxiety: a secondary study of a cluster randomised trial

In the predictD-intervention, GPs used a personalised biopsychosocial programme to prevent depression. This reduced the incidence of major depression by 21.0%, although the results were not statistically significant.

To determine whether the predictD-intervention is effective at preventing anxiety in primary care patients without depression or anxiety.

Secondary study of a cluster randomised trial with practices randomly assigned to either the predictD-intervention or usual care. This study was conducted in seven Spanish cities from October 2010 to July 2012.

In each city, 10 practices and two GPs per practice, as well as four to six patients every recruiting day, were randomly selected until there were 26-27 eligible patients for each GP. The endpoint was cumulative incidence of anxiety as measured by the PRIME-MD screening tool over 18 months.

A total of 3326 patients without depression and 140 GPs from 70 practices consented and were eligible to participate; 328 of these patients were removed because they had an anxiety syndrome at baseline. Of the 2998 valid patients, 2597 (86.6%) were evaluated at the end of the study. At 18 months, 10.4% (95% CI = 8.7% to 12.1%) of the patients in the predictD-intervention group developed anxiety compared with 13.1% (95% CI = 11.4% to 14.8%) in the usual-care group (absolute difference = -2.7% [95% CI = -5.1% to -0.3%]; P = 0.029).

A personalised intervention delivered by GPs for the prevention of depression provided a modest but statistically significant reduction in the incidence of anxiety.