A Qualitative Exploration of Causes of Depression among Persons Living with HIV Receiving Antiretroviral Therapy in Uganda: Implications for Policy

Table 1

Main topics covered and number of participants involved in the interviews with the different categories of participants at different time points.

Participant category	Number of participants	Topics covered during interview or focus group discussion (FGD)
PLWHA	11	At baseline: depression awareness, depression treatment experiences, and feasibility of integration of depression management into routine HIV care
	11	At midline: experiences with those delivering the treatment, challenges during treatment, and recommendations for change
	11	At endline: changes in health since the last therapy session, challenges encountered, what worked/did not work well, and recommendations for change
Adherent and nonadherent HIV patients (a subset of PLWHA who had not been interviewed) participating in exit interviews	11 adherent	Experiences and reasons for adherence/nonadherence
	6 nonadherent
Lay health workers	1 FGD (with 8 participants)	At baseline: perspectives on depression and psychotherapy, the process of delivery of psychotherapy, and feasibility of integration
	1 FGD (with 8 participants)	At midline: experiences and challenges of delivering psychotherapy and recommendations for improving the treatment, ease of applying decision support algorithm
	1 FGD (with 8 participants)	At endline: experiences of managing depression and with patients, challenges of managing depression and perspectives on integration, ease of applying decision support algorithm