Personalised psychotherapy in primary care: evaluation of data-driven treatment allocation to cognitive–behavioural therapy versus counselling for depression

Autor: Clarissa Bauer-Staeb, Emma Griffith, Julian J. Faraway, Katherine S. Button
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2023
Předmět:
Zdroj: BJPsych Open, Vol 9 (2023)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2056-4724
DOI: 10.1192/bjo.2022.628
Popis: Background Various effective psychotherapies exist for the treatment of depression; however, only approximately half of patients recover after treatment. In efforts to improve clinical outcomes, research has focused on personalised psychotherapy – an attempt to match patients to treatments they are most likely to respond to. Aim The present research aimed to evaluate the benefit of a data-driven model to support clinical decision-making in differential treatment allocation to cognitive–behavioural therapy versus counselling for depression. Method The present analysis used electronic healthcare records from primary care psychological therapy services for patients receiving cognitive–behavioural therapy (n = 14 544) and counselling for depression (n = 4725). A linear regression with baseline sociodemographic and clinical characteristics was used to differentially predict post-treatment Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) scores between the two treatments. The benefit of differential prescription was evaluated in a held-out validation sample. Results On average, patients who received their model-indicated optimal treatment saw a greater improvement (by 1.78 PHQ-9 points). This translated into 4–10% more patients achieving clinically meaningful changes. However, for individual patients, the estimated differences in benefits of treatments were small and rarely met the threshold for minimal clinically important differences. Conclusion Precision prescription of psychotherapy based on sociodemographic and clinical characteristics is unlikely to produce large benefits for individual patients. However, the benefits may be meaningful from an aggregate public health perspective when applied at scale.
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