Prescription patterns of antidepressants: findings from a US claims database

Abstract

The reason for prescribing antidepressants was often not reported in claims databases, and although antidepressant users with or without a diagnosis of interest can have similar somatic medical profiles and overall costs, they do not follow the same trajectory in the mental healthcare system. Depending on the research question to be answered, it is therefore important to specify which users are being targeted.