Article Are Subjects in Pharmacological Treatment Trials of Depression Representative of Patients in Routine Clinical Practice?

Objective: The methods used to evaluate the efficacy of antidepressants differ from treatment for depression in routine clinical practice. The rigorous inclusion/exclusion criteria used to select subjects for partici-pation in efficacy studies potentially limit the generalizability of these trials ’ results. It is unknown how much impact these cri-teria have on the representativeness of subjects in efficacy trials. This study esti-mated the proportion of depressed pa-tients treated in routine clinical practice who would meet standard inclusion/exclu-sion criteria for an efficacy trial. Method: A total of 803 individuals, age