Depression Screening, Treatment Can Improve Outcomes of Individuals With HIV

The more days that an adult living with HIV spends depressed, the greater the risk he or she will miss appointments for HIV primary care, experience HIV treatment failure, and/or die prematurely, according to astudy published today inJAMA Psychiatry.“Even modest increases in time spent depressed led to clinically meaningful upticks in negative outcomes,” lead author Brian Pence, Ph.D., of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, toldPsychiatric News by email. “The implication [of these findings] is that regular depression screening and rapid, evidence-based depression treatment—by shortening the duration of depression—hold the potential to have a meaningful impact on HIV outcomes,” he said.To examine the association between the persistence of depression and multiple HIV care continuum indicators, Pence and colleagues analyzed data on adult patients who received HIV care at six U.S. academic medical centers participating in the Center for AIDS Research Network of Integrated Clinical Systems (CNICS) between September 22, 2005, and August 6, 2015. As part of routine clinical visits, patients were regularly given the PHQ-9 every six or so months.Pence and colleagues focused their analysis on information collected on CNICS participants with two or more consecutive PHQ-9 measures (defined as two PHQ-9 measures separated by less than 365 days). Patients entered and remained in the analysis until one of the following occurred: death, a lapse in PHQ-9 measures (12 ...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: Brian Pence Center for AIDS Research Network of Integrated Clinical Systems. CNICS depression HIV JAMA Psychiatry missed appointments PHQ-9 viral load Source Type: research