Measurement-Based Care in the Treatment of Clinical Depression

Major depressive disorder is one of the leading causes of disability in the world. Effective treatment guidelines have been developed and disseminated; however, unlike other fields of medicine, psychiatry has been slow to adapt and utilize these empirically validated treatment strategies. Measurement-based care (MBC) provides a simple way to use the established clinical treatment guidelines to provide optimal personalized evidence-based medical care. MBC is simple and easy to implement. At the core of MBC is the longitudinal measurement of symptom severity, adherence to treatment, medication tolerability, and patient safety. For a variety of reasons, published antidepressant treatment guidelines have not been adopted by most prescribing physicians. MBC offers a solution to many of the concerns that have led to the lack of integration of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines into standard care. MBC offers physicians the opportunity to provide optimal personalized evidence-based medical care to patients requiring antidepressant treatment.