Modeling effect: How treatment intensity and duration impact depression recurrence.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Optimizing depression treatment intensity and duration is crucial, given an overburdened mental healthcare system. However, decision-making is challenged by heterogeneous treatment effects. We aimed to investigate these effects, accounting for confounders and population heterogeneity, in a real-world dataset from specialized mental healthcare.

Methods

The study included 36,946 participants from mental healthcare providers in the Northern Netherlands. We measured the effects of treatment duration and intensity on time to depression recurrence, using monthly costs as a proxy for treatment intensity. An accelerated failure time model was used, adjusting for confounding via entropy weighting. Non-linear effects were examined using restricted cubic splines to identify

SUBMITTER: Li F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12816926 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature