Čes. slov. farm. 2011, 60(4):159-164

Improving the quality and cost-effectiveness of depression treatment

Liubov Kavaliauskienė¹, Rimantas Pečiūra¹, Virginija Adomaitienė², Ruta Masteiková^3,*

¹ Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Medical Academy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Department of Drug Technology and Social Pharmacy, Lithuania

² Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Medical Academy, Department of Psychiatry, Kaunas, Lithuania

³ University of Veterinary and Pharmaceutical Sciences Brno, Faculty of Pharmacy, Department of Pharmaceutics, Czech Republic

Cost of depression treatment in Lithuania increases depending mainly on depression relapse rates. Depression relapse is in a great extent conditional on the quality of health care after the disease was diagnosed. This study was thus aimed to evaluate the first-time depression treatment and antidepressants use according to three specialists groups opinion. For this purpose 361 pharmacists, 317 family doctors and 280 psychiatrists were interviewed in Lithuania in 2009. The data on depression diagnoses were obtained from the Republic Psychiatric Health Centre. The volume of total depression diagnoses grew up by 12% during the period under study (2004-2009), the amount of relapsed depression diagnoses by 27%. According to family doctors' opinion, 13% of respondents still do not initiate depression treatment by themselves and 62% of them refer patients to psychiatrists if depression relapses. Those who prescribe a medicament all alone in most cases use sertraline, but even 38% of family doctors mention benzodiazepines. According to family doctors' answers, 32% of respondents re-evaluate the effect of medicaments in 4 weeks; on the other hand, 25% of them do not carry out such monitoring at all. The obtained results about the differences and efficiency of professional care question the quality of depression treatment in Lithuania. It is therefore necessary to formulate recommendations leading to corrections and rationalization of depression treatment.

Keywords: depression treatment; antidepressants; depression relapse

Received: May 18, 2011; Accepted: June 9, 2011; Published: April 1, 2011  Show citation