The effect of antidepressant treatment on quality of life in patients with major depressive disorder

  • Omer Aydemir, Department of Psychiatry, Celal Bayar University, Manisa, Turkey
  • Hakan Ergun, Department of Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacology, Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey
  • Sermin Kesebir, Kirikkale State Hospital, Turkey
  • Haldun Soygur, Dr. Abdurahman Yurtarslan Ankara Oncology Education and Research Hospital, Turkey
  • Cankat Tulunay, Ankara University, Turkey

Objective: In this study, it is aimed to evaluate the change of quality of life measures in relation with antidepressant response in patients with major depressive disorder.
Methods: The study was carried out with 74 outpatients with major depressive disorder. The mean age of the patients was 39.6 and 63.5% (n=47) were female. The mean duration of the illness was 3.3 years and 50 (67.6%) patients had single episode. The mean HAM-D score was 23.5.
For the assessment of quality of life, ShortForm-36 (SF-36) and EuroQol-5D (EQ-5D) were used. For severity of depression, Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D) was utilized.
Patients received either citalopram or escitalopram in the treatment. At the end of the 6th week, all patients responded and the remission rate (HAM-D≤7) was 63.5%. The mean HAM-D score at the end of the 6th week was 4.9.
Results: In the quality of life measures, all domain scores of both SF-36 and EQ-5D were found to improve significantly starting 4th week. At the end of the 6th week, the patients had still lower scores in the domains of SF-36 such as general health perception, social functioning and emotional role difficulties compared to the population norm values. Patients with recurrent episodes had more impairment at the end of the acute treatment.
Conclusions: Impairment in psychosocial functioning does not improve in parallel with antidepressant treatment response. Beside symptomatic response and remission, psychosocial improvement of the patients should be taken into consideration.