Collaborative care for depression

Over the past decade, trials based in primary care have shown the effectiveness of collaborative care models in treating depression. Essential elements of these collaborative care programmes are the use of evidence based protocols for treatment, structured collaboration between primary care providers and mental health specialists, active monitoring of adherence to treatment and of outcomes, and (in some cases) structured programmes of psychotherapy delivered in primary care. A paper by Hunkeler and colleagues (p 259) extends the evidence for collaborative care in depression in three important ways, finding that such care is acceptable to older patients, is …