Table 1.

Key-components to implement and sustain a multidisciplinary team approach to manage major depressive disorder (MDD) in chronic diseases.

Component	Features and methods
Developing a shared individualized care plan	• Collecting a patient’s biopsychosocial semi-structured history of MDD and chronic illness (diagnoses, treatments, and complications) from different perspectives (psychiatric, medical, psychological, and nursing)
	• Understanding and sharing the patient’s explanatory model of the disease
	• Negotiating the therapeutic alliance and identifying goals together with the patient from each perspective
	• Sharing decision making processes within the team
	• Explaining all the treatments to the patient in phases as an integrated process
	• Sharing the information and relevant events within the team and defining a case manager responsible for keeping the team and the patient updated
Systematic monitoring of the care plan	• Tracking the patient’s relevant clinical data in an electronic medical record accessible to the team members
	• Discussing progress, caseload, and resistance encountered by the patient in team supervisions
	• Assessing the patient’s needs and identifying new professionals, roles, and resources outside of the team required to meet them
Support of the patient self-care	• Providing tailored educational materials from each perspective to the patient
	• Fostering the patient’s motivation to get better as a shared message
	• Monitoring and promoting the patient’s adherence to the treatments and prescriptions mutually
Team training	• Organizing face-to-face training sessions to consolidate interprofessional collaboration ties and to develop a common language within the team
	• Encouraging the expression of needs, doubts, disagreement within the team
	• Planning scheduled training update sessions based on challenges and success