Introduction
depression
The last 70 years have seen the development of a wide range of antidepressants. In UK primary care, three first-line antidepressants are primarily used for the treatment of depression (fluoxetine, sertraline and citalopram), all of which are Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors.One way to provide structured treatment guidelines is through algorithms which incorporate various patient characteristics and allocate treatments most likely to be effective (Harrison Hence, at the time of publishing the study protocol, to the authors’ knowledge there was no scientifically evaluated and pragmatic stepped antidepressant decision support tool in UK primary care.