Characterising the Depression Pathway: i-VALID Project
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Characterising the depression pathway through primary and secondary care: an epidemiological study of patient cohort, diagnostic variation, comorbidities, and treatment management
IRAS ID
311476
Contact name
Stephen Kelleher
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Cambridgeshire & Peterborough NHS FT (CPFT) and University of Cambridge
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 3 months, 30 days
Research summary
Around 1 in 10 people will have depression in their lifetime and many need treatment with antidepressant medicines, but up to 30% of people don’t get better after being treated with at least two antidepressants. We call this treatment-resistant depression (TRD). National guidelines say patients with depression should speak to a professional regularly so that medicines can be changed if they are not helpful, other treatments like talking therapies can be offered, or specialist mental health teams can be involved. However, for some patients this does not happen, meaning depression affects them more. This affects their lives and also has costs for the whole country.
Patients with depression are looked after in primary care (general practice) and secondary care (mental health services), often working together. Therefore, we want to look at medical information from primary and secondary care to follow the journey of patients with depression. All the information about each patient will be linked with a random-looking code, but information that identifies people (such as names or NHS numbers) will be removed before the researchers see the information. The researchers won’t know who any patient is.
We want to find out if there is anything that makes someone more likely to have depression or TRD, and if these patients are more likely to have other diseases affecting their body or mind. We want to know if NHS services are following advice about how to treat patients, and see where care can be improved to help patients more, or if certain people need particular treatments to help them get better.
This study is part of the “i-VALID” project, which is collecting information to try and make new services better for people with TRD in future, whilst also thinking about what is important to these patients.
REC name
East Midlands - Derby Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
24/EM/0001
Date of REC Opinion
9 Jan 2024
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion