The relationship between therapeutic approach and treatment duration of patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder

Abstract

Lebanon has faced socio-political and economic hardships in the previous three years, whichhas increased Major Depressive Disorder diagnoses significantly. Health-specialized NGOslike International Medical Corps offer targeted, brief, and specialized services in outpatientclinics integrated into primary health care centers to treat depression patients due to limitedresources. As demand for their services rises, the tendency is towards a shorter-term depressiontreatment that alleviates symptoms to accommodate the increasing number of patients referred.This study examines the effects of psychotherapy, medication, and a combination of both ontreatment duration, considering age, gender, modality, and nationality.In this retrospective correlational study, to examine the relationships between the variablesdescriptive analysis, ANOVA, t-tests, and regression analysis were performed sequentially.Post hoc analysis was used to determine the group differences, and univariate analysis wasused to find distinctive patterns and determine how they affected treatment length.Using ANOVA, therapeutic intervention and modality showed statistically significant effectson the duration of treatment. Age, gender, and nationality had no effect. Bonferroni's post hocanalysis, Psychotherapy outperformed Pharmacotherapy and Remote/Telemedicineoutperformed In-Clinic in treatment length. Independent sample t-tests showed a significantdifference, where Psychotherapy and Combined Therapy were shorter than Pharmacotherapy.Remote/Telemedicine is shorter than in-clinic therapy. The multivariate regression analysisshowed statistically significant favorable relationships between treatment length, medicationuse, and combination modality. A mixed-design ANOVA showed that treatment, gender, agegroup, and modality affect therapy length. Modality and age group had statistically significanteffects. Because the interaction effects were not statistically significant, the total impact ofthese factors was not statistically significant.