Nationwide expansion of the EGUIDE project in Japan: A nine-year overview

This study aimed to describe the nationwide reach, longitudinal growth, and geographic dissemination of the Effectiveness of Guideline for Dissemination and Education in Psychiatric Treatment (EGUIDE) project in Japan from 2016 to 2024.

The EGUIDE project is a nationwide, multicenter implementation initiative designed to promote the dissemination of clinical practice guidelines, specifically the Guidelines for Pharmacological Treatment of Schizophrenia and the Treatment Guidelines II: Major Depressive Disorder. The project provides educational lectures primarily for psychiatrists and other mental health professionals. We descriptively summarized the cumulative numbers of lectures delivered, participants enrolled, and participating institutions from 2016 to 2024. In addition, we calculated the proportion of hospitals with psychiatric departments that participated in each prefecture.

Between 2016 and 2024, a total of 194 guideline lectures on schizophrenia and major depressive disorder were conducted. The cumulative number of participants reached 4785 across 763 institutions, of which 592 were hospitals with psychiatric departments, corresponding to approximately 20% of all such hospitals nationwide. Participating hospitals were distributed across most prefectures in Japan, indicating broad geographic coverage.

Over the 9-year period, the EGUIDE project continuously delivered guideline lectures and steadily expanded its participant and institutional base. The nationwide distribution of participating institutions suggests that the project has established a broad implementation platform for psychiatric guideline dissemination in Japan. Continued efforts may further strengthen this dissemination network and support future evaluations of its impact on psychiatric practice.