Patient Decision Aid Summary

Title	Treatment Options When Your SSRI Antidepressant Is Not Working Well.
To access it	View the patient decision aid on the developer website
Audience	Adults with depression considering treatment options after an SSRI did not work or did not work well enough.
Options included	Increase SSRI dose. Different SSRI. Different kind of antidepressant that is not an SSRI. Add an antipsychotic medicine. Nonmedicine treatment.
Year of last update or review	2013
Format	Web, paper, audio, PDF
Developer	Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)
Where was it developed?	http://www.ahrq.gov/info/customer.htm Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) US
Health condition	Depression
Language	English, Spanish

Based on 2025 IPDAS criteria (International Patient Decision Aid Standards) this patient decision aid (and/or supporting materials) meets:
	out of 7 IPDAS Qualifying criteria to be defined as a patient decision aid
	out of 7 IPDAS Essential criteria to lower the risk of making a biased decision
	Not applicable: Other IPDAS Essential criteria for patient decision aids about screening or testing
View IPDAS criteria details.

IPDAS Qualifying Criteria to be a patient decision aid	Answer
• The patient decision aid describes the health condition.	Yes
• The patient decision aid explicitly states the decision to be considered.	Yes
• The patient decision aid identifies the target audience(s).
• The patient decision aid lists the options including, if relevant, "wait and see" (e.g., making no change for now, doing nothing).	Yes
• The patient decision aid describes positive features of the options (e.g. benefits, advantages).	No
• The patient decision aid describes negative features of the options (e.g. harms, side effects, disadvantages).	No
• The patient decision aid asks patients to think about which positive and negative features of the options matter most to them (explicit values clarification) OR describes what it is like to experience the consequences of the options (physical, psychological, social) (implicit values clarification).	Yes

IPDAS Essential Criteria to lower the risk of making a biased decision	Answer
• The patient decision aid shows the negative and positive features of the options in a balanced manner (e.g., neutral, unbiased, non-directive, complete).	No
• The patient decision aid reports where the money came from to develop the patient decision aid and it is clearly stated (e.g., prominent, written in plain language).
• The patient decision aid provides a production or publication date.	Yes
• The patient decision aid provides information about the proposed update policy (or in a supporting document available to users).
• The patient decision aid provides complete citations to the evidence selected.	Yes
• The patient decision aid is based on best available evidence that is, where possible, directly applicable to the patients and healthcare professionals using the patient decision aid.
• The patient decision aid describes how potential users were involved in steps of designing, developing, and/or refining a prototype (or in a supporting document available to users).	Unknown

Other IPDAS Essential Criteria for patient decision aids about screening or testing	Answer
• The patient decision aid describes what the test is supposed to measure.	NA
• The patient decision aid describes possible next steps based on positive test results and negative test results.	NA
• The patient decision aid describes consequences of a positive screening finding that would not have caused problems if screening had not been done.	NA

Last modified: 2025-07-29.