What is it about?

Depression is a common illness today worldwide for a number of reasons. It leads to great suffering to the individual and the family. It is also related to increased costs for the nation. There are good number of safe and effective medicines available for its treatment, however, as high as half of the patients with depression do not comply with the advice of treating physicians and leave the medicines prematurely. This leads to relapse and recurrences further decreasing their quality of life. We, therefore, wanted to investigate which factors are related to this behavior of non- adherence.

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Why is it important?

Depression is a common and highly disabling global mental health condition. If properly treated, depression is highly treatable except in a minority leading to multiple benefits for the patients and their families. Therefore, if we know which factors are responsible for this non- adherent behavior in patients, we can target specific interventions for those behaviors with intention to improve adherence.

Perspectives

This was my first attempt for systematic review protocol for a topic I am deeply interested in. In process of planning this project, a very diverse group of people came forward for collaboration, unlike my other works so it was different experience for me too. It was a new learning as well as challenging experience for me. Nevertheless, I hope the topic we discuss brings into new insights for us to intervene when the final results are available.

Dr Saraswati Dhungana
Institute of Medicine

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Protocol for the systematic review and meta-analysis of factors associated with non-adherence to antidepressants in depressive disorders in those more than 18 years of age, PLoS ONE, February 2023, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0281366.
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