Clinical Staging in Depressive Disorders

Introduction A critical review of current models of clinical staging of depressive disorders and their potential contribution to routine clinical practice will be presented. Objectives The main objective was to establish the correlation between the clinical staging model proposed by Hetrick and McGorry (modified by our group) with the severity of depression, the associated disability and the treatment resistance degree. Methods It is a descriptive cross-sectional study carried out in a sample of 135 patients, 15 or more years old, with a diagnosis of DSM-IV-Major Depression (single or recurrent episode) that were in contact with the outpatient and inpatient Units of the Institute of Psychiatry of the San Carlos Clinico Hospital in Madrid. Socio-demographic and clinical variables were collected: diagnosis, global impression of illness, severity of depressive symptoms, functionality and disability degrees and resistanceto treatment. Results In spite the sample size limitations, it can clearly note that clinical stage model correlates in a statistically significant way with the scores of the Clinical Global Impression (CGI), and especially with the Global Assessment of Function (GAF) and the resistance to treatment degree. Conclusions We will discuss the utility of clinical staging model in the clinical practice and the interest to study the correlations between this proposed model and the established biomarkers of Major Depression.