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Efficacy versus Effectiveness: A Direct Comparison of the Outcome of Treatment for Mild to Moderate Depression in Randomized Controlled Trials and Daily Practice
Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 05/15/2012
Clinical Article
van der Lem R et al. – Effectiveness of treatment for mild–to–moderate major depressive disorder in daily practice is similar to STAR*D and significantly lower than efficacy results from randomized controlled trials.
Methods- Effectiveness in routine clinical practice was compared with efficacy results from 15 meta-analyses on antidepressant, psychotherapeutic and combination treatment and results from STAR*D.
- Data on daily practice patients and treatments were derived from a routine outcome monitoring (ROM) system.
- Treatment outcome was defined as proportion of remitters (MADRS ≤10) and within-group effect size.
- From ROM, 598 patients suffering from a MDD episode according to the MINI-plus were included.
- Remission percentages were lower in routine practice than in meta-analyses for all treatment modalities (32 vs.40-74%).
- Differences were less explicit for antidepressants (21 vs. 34-47%) than for individual psychotherapy (27 vs. 34-58%; effect size 0.85 vs. 1.71) and combination therapy (21 vs. 45-63%), since only 60% of the meta-analyses for antidepressants showed significant differences with ROM, while for psychotherapy and combination treatment almost all meta-analyses showed significant differences.
- No differences in effectiveness were found between routine practice and STAR*D (antidepressants 27 vs. 28%; individual psychotherapy 27 vs. 25%; combination treatment 21 vs. 23%, respectively).
