Petrushka Study

What is the purpose of the study?

Antidepressants are one of the available treatments for depression. There are many
antidepressants that are licensed in the UK and any of them can be prescribed to you by your doctor. Matching antidepressant treatment to specific patients, however, is too often a matter of trial and error, with many factors influencing whether a treatment is suited to an individual.

These factors may include clinical and demographic characteristics, how a person has
responded to other treatments in the past, how severe their condition is and whether they have any other conditions they are being treated for.

By using routinely collected NHS data and clinical trial data, the study team have developed a tool (called PETRUSHKA) to personalise treatment for people with depression and predict which antidepressant works best for each individual, based on their characteristics (for instance, age, sex assigned at birth, severity of symptoms) and their preferences about side effects. In this study, we will test the PETRUSHKA tool in adults with depression who are seen by their General Practitioner (GP) and compare this personalised approach with usual care in the NHS (i.e., standard care).