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. 2022 Apr 20;17(4):e0265928.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0265928. eCollection 2022.

Antidepressants and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) for patients with depression: Analysis of the medical expenditure panel survey from the United States

Omar A Almohammed  1   2 , Abdulaziz A Alsalem  1 , Abdullah A Almangour  1 , Lama H Alotaibi  1 , Majed S Al Yami  3   4   5 , Leanne Lai  6
Affiliations

Antidepressants and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) for patients with depression: Analysis of the medical expenditure panel survey from the United States

Omar A Almohammed et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

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.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. The flow diagram for the design of the study.
Abbreviations: HRQoL: Health related quality of life, MEPS: Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, PCS: Physical component summary, MCS: Mental component summary, D-I-D: Difference in differences.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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