Physicians key to successful recruitment of women in mental health trials.

2003 MAY 1 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- The most successful strategy for recruiting women to participate in clinical trials addressing prevention and treatment of postpartum depression is referral by an obstetrician or other healthcare worker.

Other effective tactics are media appearances and advertising, which are particularly successful for recruitment to prevention studies, and mass mailings and other promotional materials for treatment studies.

These findings were reported by K.S. Peindl and colleagues, Thomas Jefferson University, Department of Psychiatry & Human Behavior.

"Recruiting women into research protocols allows investigators to examine the efficacies of treatments and to study other outcomes among women with mental illnesses. However, achieving recruitment goals has been difficult for researchers," they noted.

To identify successful approaches, Peindl and associates "systematically screened" the 589 women, who were either pregnant or in the postpartum period, who called the Thomas Jefferson University outpatient clinic about clinical study enrollment over a period of four years. Among other services, the clinic treats women seeking attention for affective disorders.

The researchers found that "obstetricians and other healthcare professionals referred a large number of ...