What a New Systematic Review Tells Us About the Future of Depression Care Major depressive disorder (MDD) remains one of the leading causes of disability worldwide. While antidepressant prescribing has increased substantially over the past decades, the overall societal burden of depression has not declined in parallel. A newly published systematic review in the Journal of Psychopharmacology sheds light on one potential contributor to this gap: loss of antidepressant responsi

This meta-analysis found that LAIs are consistently associated with reduced relapse and hospitalization rates versus oral antipsychotics in schizophrenia — driven largely by improved adherence. Although in a different CNS indication, this high-quality evidence supports the conceptual proof of LAIs improving real-world outcomes by enhancing adherence and reducing relapse, strengthening your argument for LAI in MDD.

A systematic review showing that adherence-focused interventions can improve medication taking up to 6 months, but adherence remains a persistent challenge in MDD. The study reinforces that adherence itself is a strong predictor of outcomes and that novel treatment formats (like LAIs) could inherently improve adherence by design.

Keyloun KR, et al. (2017) — Adherence and Persistence Across Antidepressant Therapeutic Classes in MDD Using a large US insurance claims dataset, this study found that adherence to initial antidepressant medication drops sharply over time (e.g., ~41 % at 3 months to ~21 % at 12 months). The study highlights the challenge of maintaining continuous oral antidepressant use in everyday clinical practice, reinforcing the case for alternative delivery systems.

This study provides real-world evidence that antidepressant therapy should last at least 6 months to reduce relapse, yet adherence and persistence are often low, contributing to poor outcomes in MDD.