Integrated Collaborative Care Interventions for Obesity and Depression

JAMA reported on the improvement in the levels of weight loss in those patients with some depressive symptoms. Those individuals with depression and obesity.

How can integrated collaborative care interventions help with the symptoms of both depressive and obesity? This simply means losing weight and not so perpetually sad as individuals.

These become important considerations for the general public, as care and concern for the obese and the depressed become issues of generalized health and wellness.

The findings from the report on 409 patients, so a large sample size, is that the integrated behavioural weight loss treatment with as-needed anti-depressant medication provisions improved the outcomes of the patients.

These resulted in, as reported, “statistically significant reductions in body mass index compared with usual care (−0.7 vs −0.1, respectively) and depressive symptoms (−0.3 vs −0.1 on the 20-item Depression Symptom Checklist; score range, 0–4) at 12 months.”

There was a significant, apart from statistical variations, improvements in the health and wellness as seen in the Body Mass Index or BMI and the depressive symptoms — as in a reduction of the severity of depression — for those who went through the integrated collaborative care interventions directed at obesity and depression.

With regards to the degree of the changes, the effect sizes, or the scale of the differences before the treatments and after the treatments, were “modest and of uncertain clinical importance,” which does not negate the statistically significant results found in the aforementioned statements about the report