Predicting non-response to multimodal day clinic treatment in severely impaired depressed patients: a machine learning approach

A considerable number of depressed patients do not respond to treatment. Accurate prediction of non-response to routine clinical care may help in treatment planning and improve results. A longitudinal sample of N = 239 depressed patients was assessed at admission to multi-modal day clinic treatment, after six weeks, and at discharge. First, patient’s treatment response was modelled by identifying longitudinal trajectories using the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS-17). Then, individual items of the HDRS-17 at admission as well as individual patient characteristics were entered as predictors of response/non-response trajectories into the binary classification model (eXtremeGradient Boosting; XGBoost). The model was evaluated on a hold-out set and explained in human-interpretable form by SHapley Additive explanation (SHAP) values. The prediction model yielded a multi-class AUC = 0.80 in the hold-out set. The predictive power for the binary classification yielded an AUC = 0.83 (sensitivity = .80, specificity = .77). Most relevant predictors for non-response were insomnia symptoms, younger age, anxiety symptoms, depressed mood, being unemployed, suicidal ideation and somatic symptoms of depressive disorder. Non-responders to routine treatment for depression can be identified and screened for potential next-generation treatments. Such predictors may help personalize treatment and improve treatment response.