Background: Many policy and research documents on the treatment of depression in primary care suggest that general practitioners (GPs) should make use of clinical guidelines.
Aim: To describe the content of peer-reviewed guidelines for the detection and treatment of depression in primary care and help GPs identify the one most useful to their own needs.
Method: Guidelines were evaluated by an explicit method using the Institute of Medicine assessment instrument and according to six key clinical management questions identified as important by GPs and psychiatrists.
Results: Only five (30%) of the published guidelines identified met all the pre-defined inclusion criteria. Total scores for development process and content ranged from 54% to 82%. Validity scores ranged from 52% to 88%. No guideline answered all the key questions identified by clinicians.
Conclusions: Only two guidelines conform to the quality standard of a clinical practice guideline. One covers all aspects of detection and management of depression in primary care but gives no advice on first-line choice of antidepressant, while the other focuses only on medication and fails to explore problems of case detection or to consider non-pharmacological treatments. However, taken together they do cover most of the key clinical issues in a reliable and valid manner. The identified guidelines vary considerably in both utility and clinical applicability.