Health Policy Manag.  2024 Mar;34(1):68-77. 10.4332/KJHPA.2024.34.1.68.

Relationship between Depression and Health Care Utilization

• Cho HE
• Lee JH

• KMID: 2562564
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.4332/KJHPA.2024.34.1.68

Abstract

Background
Depressive disorders can be categorized into daily depression and clinical depression. The experience of depressive disorder can increase health care utilization due to decreased treatment compliance and somatization. On the other hand, the clinical depression group may also experience social prejudice associated with the illness, which can limit their access to health care utilization. In terms of the significance of health care utilization as a factor in individual and social issues, this study aims to compare the health care utilization of the clinical depression group with that of the non-depressed group and the daily depression group.
Methods
The analysis utilized the inverse probability of treatment weighting based on the generalized propensity score.
Results
As a result of the analysis, clinical depression and daily depression were higher among women, low-income groups, individuals with low education levels, and so forth. The clinical depression group was also higher among individuals who were not economically active, did not have private health insurance, or had multiple chronic diseases. The number of outpatient department visits in the depression group was significantly higher than in the non-depressed group. In addition, the number of outpatient department visits for the clinical depression group was significantly higher than that for the daily depression group. Outpatient medical expenses were higher in the depression group than in the non-depressed group, and there was no significant difference between the clinical depression group and the daily depression group.
Conclusion
Health care utilization was higher in the depression group than the non-depressed group, it was also higher in the clinical depression group than the daily depression group.

Keyword

Depressive disorder; Depressive episode; Depression; Hospital costs; Health care utilization