How can we improve the management of depression?

Ongoing efforts to improve depression management yield ongoing benefits for patients. Rost and colleagues (p 934) find that, in addition to increasing remission rates, ongoing intervention improved both emotional and physical functioning in depressed patients in primary care practices across the United States. These results should encourage health planners to make a small but continuing investment in the treatment of depression. Meanwhile, Scott and colleagues (p 951) show that a simple practice based approach improved the detection and management of depression in a team familiar with the philosophy of chronic disease management. However, this approach failed to affect depression management in a less well resourced practice, suggesting that developing an effective system in a wide variety of practice settings remains a challenge.

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