Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

People who are very overweight (considered obese) often suffer from depression. Similarly, people with depression are at risk for becoming obese. Both obesity and depression are very common among Canadians. Family practitioners are usually the first health professionals that people visit to help deal with depression. In patients with depression, excessive weight may make the treatment less efficient because fat can interfere with the action of the drug. Treatment efficiency may also be different for men and women. At this time, however, it is not clear if family practitioners prescribe drugs against depression differently for obese men and women to account for this fact. It is also unclear whether these ways of prescribing may influence a person's general health. The goal of our study is to evaluate the relationship between how family practitioners prescribe for depression and a patient's body weight and gender, and how this affects their health. As a first step, we are planning to evaluate how many men and women with depression receive prescriptions for antidepressants, including those that are known to change patients' body weight. In addition, we will compare the proportions of people with and without AD prescription among patients of different weight groups. For our analysis, we will use a large healthcare database based on the primary care-based electronic medical records from eight Canadian provinces. Our study will help us understand if primary care practitioners prescribe antidepressants differently for men and women of different weight groups. The results will help us plan and carry out the next step of the study: to evaluate in details how primary care practitioners prescribe AD for overweight and obese men and women, and to assess how this influences a patient's general health. This study will improve policies for prescribing antidepressants for obese and overweight people in primary care.