Thursday, January 06, 2011
depression
Marcus SC, Olfson M.
Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2010;67:1265-1273.
Summary
This is a report of service utilization data from 2 large nationally representative surveys of the US population. The authors measured rates of depression treatment, use of antidepressant medication and psychotherapy, and the number of outpatient treatment visits and expenditures. The authors found that the rate of outpatient treatment for depression increased from 2.37 per 100 persons in 1998 to 2.88 per 100 persons in 2007. The percentage of treated patients who used antidepressants changed little -- from 73.8% in 1998 to 75.3% in 2007 -- but the percentage of those receiving psychotherapy declined from 53.6% to 43.1%. National expenditure for outpatient treatment of depression increased from $10.05 billion to $12.45 billion, primarily due to an increase in medication expenditures from $4.59 billion to $6.60 billion but also because of an increase in Medicare expenditures for depression treatment from $0.52 billion to $2.25 billion.
