%0 Journal Article %T Antidepressants and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) for patients with depression: analysis of the medical expenditure panel survey from the United States %J PLoS one %D 2022 %A Almohammed, Omar A. %A Alsalem, Abdulaziz A. %A Almangour, Abdullah A. %A Alotaibi, Lama H. %A Yami, Majed S. Al %A Lai, Leanne %V 17 %N 4 %P e0265928-e0265928 %X Background Despite the empirical literature demonstrating the efficacy of antidepressant medications for treatment of depression disorder, these medications' effect on patients' overall well-being and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) remains controversial. This study investigates the effect of antidepressant medication use on patient-reported HRQoL for patients who have depression.

METHODS A comparative cohort, secondary database analysis was conducted using data from the United States' Medical Expenditures Panel Survey for patients who had depression. HRQoL was measured using the SF-12 and reported as physical and mental component summaries (PCS and MCS). A cohort of patients that used antidepressant medications were compared to a cohort of patients that did not. Univariate and multivariate difference-in-differences (D-I-D) analyses were used to assess the significance of the mean difference of change on the PCS and MCS from baseline to follow-up.

RESULTS On average, 17.5 million adults were diagnosed with depression disorder each year during the period 2005-2016. The majority were female (67.9%), a larger proportion of whom received antidepressant medications (60.5% vs. 51.5% of males). Although use of antidepressants was associated with some improvement on the MCS, D-I-D univariate analysis revealed no significant difference between the two cohorts in PCS (-0.35 vs. -0.34, p = 0.9595) or MCS (1.28 vs. 1.13, p = 0.6405). The multivariate D-I-D analyses ensured the robustness of these results.

CONCLUSION The real-world effect of using antidepressant medications does not continue to improve patients' HRQoL over time. Future studies should not only focus on the short-term effect of pharmacotherapy, it should rather investigate the long-term impact of pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions on these patients' HRQoL.

Language: en

%G en %I Public Library of Science %@ 1932-6203 %U http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265928