Although depression is common among incurable cancer patients, the prescription prevalence of antidepressants (ADs) to these patients is largely unknown. Aims were to examine the prescription prevalence of ADs in the last year of life in a 2-year national cancer death cohort and to examine its associations with sociodemographic and medical variables.
Nationwide, 20,627 cancer deaths in adults were identified by combining the Norwegian Central Population and Cancer Registries. Individual prescriptions of ADs in the 12 months prior to death were identified in the Norwegian Prescription Database. The study population consisted of 17,753 patients who died from cancer in 2005 and 2006, after excluding patients assumed to be hospitalized whose prescriptions were not registered in the Norwegian Prescription Database.
Twenty-two percent (N = 3836) had at least one prescription of ADs in their last year of life (men 19%/women 25%), compared with 6% in the general population (men 4%/women 8%). Patients who died within 1 year from diagnosis had lower prescription prevalence (20%) than patients with longer disease duration (23%) (p