Patient-reported outcomes in the clinical management of depression: current status and future directions

Background: Insight into the assessment of patient-reported outcomes among adults with depression can help to understand their perception of their mental health and care experience. Aims: To identify studies on the use of Patient-reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) and Patient-reported Experience Measures (PREMs) in the clinical care of depression. Methods: A narrative review was conducted. PubMed and Scopus databases were searched for studies using patient-reported outcomes among people with depression. Results: Several disease-specific and generic PROMs are available to assess the perceived symptoms severity and functioning. The use of PREMs is instead mostly limited to assessing satisfaction with care. There are also a series of psychometric and content limitations that hinder the reliability of such measures in the clinical management of depression. Conclusions: There is a variety of patient-reported outcomes of relevance among adults with depression. Despite the growing interest regarding such outcomes and their measures, several methodological issues should be considered. Moreover, significant aspects of functional recovery of relevance for people living with depression do not appear to be completely covered by currently available measures.