A survey of the importance of outcomes for depression trials

Summary

Depression is a severe and enduring illness and is expected to be a leading worldwide health problem by 2030. Numerous treatments are currently provided, including antidepressants with a lower uptake for cognitive therapies, such as talking therapies, despite evidence showing they are similar in effectiveness. Research outcomes are used to evaluate how well any treatment works and are typically decided on by researchers, with little input from those using the services or providing them. This means that outcomes set by the research team may not reflect those outcomes valued by service-users or service-providers.

This study aims to bring some balance to this by collecting service-users and service-providers views in which outcomes are important to them. We will present people with depression, people with a history of depression who currently do not have symptoms, and service-providers two lists of outcomes and will ask them to judge each outcome in order of importance to them. They will be asked to do this by assigning a total of 100 points to each outcome on each list. This information will then be used to give each of those outcomes a score that can then produce a model that future research can use to aid not only in choosing appropriate outcomes that are valued by service-users and service-providers but also to give each of them an appropriate ‘weight’.

The NIHR BioResource will allow us the opportunity to select participants who have previously or currently have depression and invite them to our study. If successful, this method could be benefit patients, service-providers and the public by being included in future trial analysis or reanalysis to allow the persceptive of what is important to those receiving or providing treatments.