The most frequently used primary outcome in depression trials are symptom-based.

Symptom-based outcomes are often not the most important to those with lived experience.

Quantitative methods could help understand outcome importance to stakeholders.

This can aid future trialists select relevant outcomes to the treatments end-users.

Depression is a severe and enduring mental illness, expected to be a leading cause of global disease burden worldwide by 2030. Current randomised control trials (RCTs) assessing treatment efficacy in depression frequently use symptom-based outcomes as the primary. However, qualitative work with people with lived experience of depression, hereafter referred to as ‘service-users, often find other outcomes like functioning and quality of life are equally or more important. This short communication advocates for quantitative methods in larger samples to understand outcome importance to service-users and providers to aid clinical trialists in selecting relevant outcomes to the end-users and providers of the depression treatment under investigation. CONSORT 2025 has updated their guidance to now encourage the reporting of lived experience involvement in RCTs, so now is a time to also change how meaningful outcomes are selected for research, so trials are measuring outcomes that meet the end-users and providers priorities.

Depression

Outcomes

Randomised control trial

Efficacy

Service-user priorities

© 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.