Impact of duration of untreated illness on clinical and physical measures in early adult patients with major depressive disorder: a large-scale cross-sectional study

作者：Guoshuai Luo, Lei Gou, Ke Zhang, Shutong Yang, Rui Jiang, Yuanyuan Liu, Jianan Zhou, Cui Li, Cong Yao, Yaxi Li, Xiangyang Zhang · 发表于：Journal of Affective Disorders · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1016/j.jad.2025.120658 · 被引用次数：2 · 研究领域：Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development、Advanced Causal Inference Techniques、Treatment of Major Depression

BACKGROUNDS: Longer duration of untreated illness leads to worse outcomes in people with depressive disorders. However, there is a lack of research on duration of untreated illness in early adult depressed patients. This study aimed to investigate the association between the duration of duration of untreated illness and clinical and physical measures in youth with depression. METHODS: We recruited 1289 early adult patients with major depressive disorder. Duration of untreated illness was defined as the time between the onset of depressive symptoms and the initiation of pharmacological treatment. We used bivariate and multivariate analyses to examine the association between duration of untreated illness and clinical and physical measures, adjusting for age, sex, education, and marital status. RESULTS: Participants who had not received treatment for ≥8 months had higher odds of suicide attempts (OR: 1.77, 95 % CI: 1.15-2.74), increased thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) levels (OR: 2.73, 95 % CI: 1.91-3.88), and high-normal blood pressure (OR: 1.98, 95 % CI: 1.33-2.94) compared to those treated within 3 months. Each 1-month longer duration of untreated illness was associated with 5 % higher odds of suicide attempts (95 % CI: 1.02-1.08), 8 % higher odds of elevated TSH (95 % CI: 1.05-1.11), and 5 % higher odds of high-normal blood pressure (95 % CI: 1.02-1.08). CONCLUSIONS: Our study found that a longer duration of untreated illness in depression is associated with several advers...