Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Both obesity and depression are very common among Canadians. In patients with depression, excessive weight may make treatment with drugs against depression (antidepressants) less efficient because fat can interfere with the action of the drug. Indeed, there are more people resistant to treatment among obese people than among people with normal weight. There are, however, no specific guidelines on how to prescribe antidepressants to people with excess weight. Presently, it is not clear if primary care doctors prescribe these drugs differently for obese people than for people with normal weight. It is also unclear how these ways of prescribing may influence a person's general health. The goal of our study is to evaluate how different ways of prescribing affect the health of obese and overweight people of different age and gender. For our analysis, we will use large UK healthcare database, based on the electronic health records. We will use advanced methods of epidemiology and statistics. We will compare the relations between specific ways of prescribing antidepressants and suicides, self-harm, hospitalizations, referrals to mental health specialists, and visits to primary care doctors, between people with excess weight and people with normal weight. We will evaluate whether these relations are different for young and old people and for men and women, and we will account for other differences among patients. Our study will help understand if primary care doctors prescribe antidepressants differently for people with excess weigh and for normal weight people and whether obese men and women receive the same standard of care as people with normal weight. We will also determine whether obese people have more health problems than normal weight people with the same prescriptions. This study will help understand current problems with prescribing and may improve policies for prescribing antidepressants for obese and overweight people in primary care.