The Individual and Societal Burden of Treatment-Resistant Depression: An Overview

Abstract

Major depressive disorder is characterized by depressed mood and/or anhedonia with neurovegetative symptoms and neurocognitive changes affecting an individual's functioning in multiple aspects of life. Treatment outcomes with commonly used antidepressants remain suboptimal. Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) should be considered after inadequate improvement with two or more antidepressant treatments of adequate dose and duration. TRD has been associated with increased disease burden including higher associated costs (both socially and financially) affecting both the individual and society. Additional research is needed to better understand the long-term burden of TRD to both the individual and society.

Keywords: Burden of depression; Depression; Major depressive disorder; Quality of life; Treatment-resistant depression.

Fig. 1.

Change in age-adjusted mortality rate due to suicide in the United States between 1999 and 2017. Age-adjusted mortality rates for suicide, cancer, and heart disease were obtained from the National Center for Health Statistics dataset. The age-adjusted rate in the year 1999 was set as baseline and percent change was calculated for each year. Although rates of cancer and heart disease declined by 24.1% and 38.1%, respectively, the age-adjusted mortality rate of suicide increased by 33.3% between 1999 and 2017.