Treatment Patterns During Major Depressive Episodes Among Patients with Major Depressive Disorder: A Retrospective Database Analysis

Background Major depressive disorder, a highly prevalent mental health condition, can be challenging to treat. Objective We aimed to characterize treatment patterns within and across multiple major depressive episodes in patients receiving treatment for major depressive disorder. Methods Adults with newly diagnosed major depressive disorder and one or more major depressive episodes were identified using the IBM (R) MarketScan (R) Commercial database. Eligible patients had 12 months of continuous enrollment before and after diagnosis. Lines of therapy were periods of continuous treatment with one or more antidepressant claims. Antidepressant, atypical antipsychotic, or mood stabilizer regimens as monotherapy or adjunctive therapy were characterized by lines of therapy and major depressive episodes. Descriptive analyses were performed. Results A total of 455,082 patients were included in the analysis. The majority of treatment regimens were monotherapy, which decreased with subsequent lines of therapy, while adjunctive treatments increased with subsequent lines of therapy. There were 1860 unique adjunctive regimens identified. Of the 40,315 patients (9%) who received adjunctive therapy, 8024 (20%; 2% of all patients) received atypical antipsychotic-adjunctive regimens. Only 19% of patients treated with atypical antipsychotic-adjunctive therapy discontinued treatment versus 42% of monotherapy-treated patients. On average, patients who received an adjunctive atypical antipsychotic received it as their third line of therapy and approximately 400 days after the initial antidepressant treatment. Conclusions In this study, many patients continued monotherapy major depressive disorder regimens and experienced multiple treatment changes. Few patients were treated with adjunctive therapy. These results suggest underutilization of potentially effective treatments, which represents an opportunity to optimize the treatment of patients with major depressive disorder.