SynthesisThe British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners2011
International comparison of clinicians' ability to identify depression in primary care: meta-analysis and meta-regression of predictors.
Synthesis in The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 68 citations in OpenAlex.
- Prospective Assessment of Depression and Anxiety Trajectories Among Emergency Department Patients with Somatic Complaints.The western journal of emergency medicine · 2026Article
- Extended Reality-Enhanced Mental Health Consultation Training: Quantitative Evaluation Study.JMIR medical education · 2025Article
- A pilot cluster-controlled trial of interventions to improve detection of depression in primary healthcare in Ethiopia.BMC medicine · 2025Article
- Thwarted Belongingness and Suicide Risk in Primary Care: Perceived Burdensomeness and Psychache as Mediators.Journal of clinical psychology in medical settings · 2024Article
- Developing interventions to improve detection of depression in primary healthcare settings in rural Ethiopia.BJPsych open · 2024Article
- Treatment-resistant depression: definition, prevalence, detection, management, and investigational interventions.World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2023Article
- Comparing Pruning and Thresholding with Continuous Shrinkage Polygenic Score Methods in a Large Sample of Ancestrally Diverse Adolescents from the ABCD StudyBehavior genetics · 2023Article
- GPs' identification of patients with mental distress: a coupled questionnaire and cohort study from norwegian urban general practice.BMC primary care · 2022Observational
- Care pathways for people with major depressive disorder: a European Brain Council Value of Treatment study.European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists · 2022Article
- Combining the GP's assessment and the PHQ-9 questionnaire leads to more reliable and clinically relevant diagnoses in primary care.PloS one · 2022Article
- Toward an Extended Definition of Major Depressive Disorder Symptomatology: Digital Assessment and Cross-validation Study.JMIR formative research · 2021Article
- [Translation and cross-cultural adaptation into Spanish, Catalan and Galician of the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25 to identify depression in Primary Care].Atencion primaria · 2020Article
- Article
- Depression in Emergency Department Patients and Association With Health Care Utilization.Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine · 2019Article
- Evaluation of the impacts of a district-level mental health care plan on contact coverage, detection and individual outcomes in rural Uganda: a mixed methods approach.International journal of mental health systems · 2019Article
- Screening for psychiatric morbidity in the population - a comparison of the GHQ-12 and self-reported medication use.International journal of population data science · 2018Article
- Identification of major depressive disorder among the long-term unemployed.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2018Article
- The Treatment of Depression in Primary Care.Deutsches Arzteblatt international · 2017Article
- The psychometric characteristics of the revised depression attitude questionnaire (R-DAQ) in Pakistani medical practitioners: a cross-sectional study of doctors in Lahore.BMC research notes · 2017Article
- Recognition of depression by primary care clinicians in rural Ethiopia.BMC family practice · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThere are international differences in the epidemiology of depression and the performance of primary care physicians but the factors underlying these national differences are uncertain.
aimTo examine the international variability in diagnostic performance of primary care physicians when diagnosing depression in primary care. DESIGN OF STUDY: A meta-analysis of unassisted clinical diagnoses against semi-structured interviews.
methodA systematic literature search, critical appraisal, and pooled analysis were conducted and 25 international studies were identified involving 8917 individuals. A minimum of three independent studies per country were required to aid extrapolation.
resultsClinicians in the Netherlands performed best at case finding (the ability to rule in cases of depression with minimal false positives) (AUC+ 0.735) and this was statistically significantly better than the ability of clinicians in Australia (AUC+ 0.622) and the US (AUC+ 0.653), who were the worst performers. Clinicians from Italy had intermediate case-finding abilities. Regarding screening (the ability to rule out cases of no depression with minimal false negatives) there were no strong differences. Looking at overall accuracy, primary care physicians in Italy and the Netherlands were most successful in their diagnoses and physicians from the US and Australia least successful (83.5%, 81.9%, 74.3%, and 67.0%, respectively). GPs in the UK appeared to have the lowest ability to detect depression, as a proportion of all cases of depression (45.6%; 95% CI = 27.7% to 64.2%). Several factors influenced detection accuracy including: collecting data on clinical outcomes; routinely comparing the clinical performance of staff; working in small practices; and having long waits to see a specialist.
conclusionAssuming these differences are representative, there appear to be international variations in the ability of primary care physicians to diagnose depression, but little differences in screening success. These might be explained by organisational factors.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.