SynthesisJournal of affective disorders2022
Life events and treatment prognosis for depression: A systematic review and individual patient data meta-analysis.
Synthesis in Journal of affective disorders, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Evidence-Based Laboratory Medicine for Cardiovascular Disease Management in Mental Healthcare: A Literature Review.Cureus · 2026Review
- Article
- Major Depressive Disorder With Versus Without Psychosocial Triggers: A Secondary Analysis of a Prospective Cohort Study.Depression and anxiety · 2026Article
- Temporal depressive symptom networks in older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic.Journal of mood and anxiety disorders · 2025Article
- Differences in psychological treatment outcomes by ethnicity and gender: an analysis of individual patient data.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2024Article
- Revisiting a hypothesis: the neurovascular unit as a link between major depression and neurodegenerative disorders.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2024Article
- Comorbidity between major depressive disorder and physical diseases: a comprehensive review of epidemiology, mechanisms and management.World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2023Article
- Development of a model to predict antidepressant treatment response for depression among Veterans.Psychological medicine · 2023Article
- Examining bi-directional change in sleep and depression symptoms in individuals receiving routine psychological treatment.Journal of psychiatric research · 2023Article
- Immature defense mechanisms mediate the relationship between negative life events and depressive symptoms.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Transdiagnostic symptom dynamics during psychotherapy.Scientific reports · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
20 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveTo investigate associations between major life events and prognosis independent of treatment type: (1) after adjusting for clinical prognostic factors and socio-demographics; (2) amongst patients with depressive episodes at least six-months long; and (3) patients with a first life-time depressive episode.
methodsSix RCTs of adults seeking treatment for depression in primary care met eligibility criteria, individual patient data (IPD) were collated from all six (n = 2858). Participants were randomized to any treatment and completed the same baseline assessment of life events, demographics and clinical prognostic factors. Two-stage random effects meta-analyses were conducted.
resultsReporting any major life events was associated with poorer prognosis regardless of treatment type. Controlling for baseline clinical factors, socio-demographics and social support resulted in minimal residual evidence of associations between life events and treatment prognosis. However, removing factors that might mediate the relationships between life events and outcomes reporting: arguments/disputes, problem debt, violent crime, losing one's job, and three or more life events were associated with considerably worse prognoses (percentage difference in 3-4 months depressive symptoms compared to no reported life events =30.3%(95%CI: 18.4-43.3)).
conclusionsAssessing for clinical prognostic factors, social support, and socio-demographics is likely to be more informative for prognosis than assessing self-reported recent major life events. However, clinicians might find it useful to ask about such events, and if they are still affecting the patient, consider interventions to tackle problems related to those events (e.g. employment support, mediation, or debt advice). Further investigations of the efficacy of such interventions will be important.
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