Project overview

We want to look at whether giving personal feedback to people being treated for depression might help them get better more quickly. One way of doing this is by using patient reported outcome measures (or 'PROMs') which involve patients filling out questionnaires to record their symptoms of depression and feeding back the questionnaire results to the health professionals looking after them, at follow-up appointments. Some benefit for patients from reduced depression has been shown to result from monitoring their progress with PROMs, at least in specialist psychological therapy and mental health settings.

In a previous study in general practices in southern England between 2014 and 2016, lower levels of depression symptoms were found at 12 weeks follow-up among patients who used PROMs at follow-up assessment, suggesting that completing them may improve the outcome of depression treatment for patients. However, this approach has not yet been researched properly in UK general practices.

General practice is the setting in which most people with depression are treated in the UK, so it's important to test whether PROMs can be helpful in that setting.

Local Investigators: Michael Moore, Geraldine Leydon, Beth Stuart, Adam Geraghty, Gareth Griffiths, Rachel Dewar-Haggart, Samantha Williams

Study team: Dr Rachel Dewar-Haggart, Miss Natalie Thompson, Dr Lien Bui

Contact: [email protected]

This project is being conducted by the Primary Care Research Centre

Staff

Lead researchers

Professor Tony Kendrick BSc MD FRCGP FRCPsych FHEA

Professor of Primary Care
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Other researchers

Dr Adam Geraghty BSc MSc PhD CPsychol FHEA

Assoc Prof Psychology & Behavioural Med

Research interests

  • Self-management of pain and other chronic symptoms/conditions
  • Mental health
  • Digital interventions for primary care and public health
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Mrs Sam Williams

Trial Manager
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Professor Geraldine Leydon

Prof of Medicine, Sociology & Healthcare

Research interests

  • Healthcare communication
  • Qualitative methods in health reesarch 
  • Optimising the patient experience
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Professor Gareth Griffiths

Director SCTU & Prof of Clinical Trials

Research interests

  • Gareth Griffiths is Professor of Clinical Trials and directs our Southampton Clinical Trials Unit.  He works with clinicians, research groups and other scientists in the development of important clinical trials and other well-designed studies that aim to improve the treatment of a range of cancers and other diseases, and early diagnosis of cancer.
  • His works spans the different phases of clinical trials, from small dose finding and safety studies involving a handful of patients to larger trials of hundreds of patients looking at whether the treatments are better than the current standard treatments.  His early diagnosis studies include thousands of patients looking at new ways to detect cancer early.  Ultimately, these studies could help change the way that patients are treated for the better, by creating the evidence so as the new treatments becomes the standard of care for future patients treated in the NHS.
  • Phase I-III clinical trials
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Collaborating research institutes, centres and groups

Research outputs