Do patient requests for antidepressants enhance or hinder physicians' evaluation of depression?
General antidepressant requests increase depression history taking, including screening for suicide. Patients' requests for medication do not appear to short-circuit history taking for depression or distract the physician's attention from coexisting musculoskeletal conditions.
Over the study period, 90% of all PBAC recommendations resulted in a PBS listing. In 2001 there was a statistically significant increase in the mean time to list. In addition, it appears that recommendations for new listings and new indications (medicines that are likely to result in substantial Government expenditure) were associated with a longer time to list.