Progress on Primary Care Management of Depression

In this issue, a report from Germany provides importantguidance for primary care clinicians and policymakers. Working with 74 small primary care practices in a cluster randomized trial, Gensichen and colleagues (1) found that provision of telephone support by practice staff to patients with depression improved 12-month depression outcomes. At baseline, 75 % of patients were already in treatment (others were identified through screening) and symptoms were mod-erately severe, with Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) scores of 17 (2). At 12 months, depression severity scores showed moderate but significantly greater improvement for the intervention group than for the control group (interven-tion recipients scored 1.41 points lower on the PHQ-9). Re-sponse, defined as a decrease of at least 50 % in scores, was attained by 41 % of patients in the intervention group versus 27 % in the control group