Although many studies use different criteria for diagnosing depression and different outcome measures, the overall results are consistent:

• About a 40-60% reduction in absenteeism/presenteeism resulting from usual care of depression.
• About a 20-30% further reduction resulting from enhanced care.

Although many of these studies used different criteria for diagnosing depression, different methods of treating depression, and different treatment outcome measures, the overall results were very consistent: about a 40-55% reduction in absenteeism with treatment of depression.

				Percent Reduction in Absenteeism/Presenteeism
First Author	Journal	Year	Sample	Usual Care	Enhanced Care*
Dunlop, DD	Am J Pub Health	2005	6,871	50%
Wang, PS	Am J Psych	2004	286	43%
Simon, GE	Gen Hosp Psych	2000	290	50%
Claxton, AJ	JOEM	1999	630	53%
Simon, GE	Psychological Med	1998	156		23%
Rost, K	Med Care	2004	326		28%

* Enhanced Care reduction is above and beyond the Usual Care reduction.

Why are these estimates different?

See abstracts for these studies.

In addition to the above publications, many others were reviewed that support the overall findings regarding the percent improvement due to treatment. These articles are not listed above as primary references because of possible sample size, measurement, analysis, or representativeness issues.

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