A Meal Recommendation System for Major Depressive Disorder Patients

Depression requires medications as a primary treatment to help the patient recover from the disease or alleviate it and can lead a normal life. Unfortunately, medications used in the treatment of depression can affect the patient's body. Some patients do not take the medication continuously until their symptoms of the disease relapse, which can lead to suicide. Therefore, to improve treatment outcomes, integrating nutritional principles into the therapeutic approach becomes imperative. The purpose of this research was to design and develop a meal recommendation system for major depressive disorder patients with malnutrition that takes into account the side effects of medications, physical symptoms, and chronic non-communicable diseases. This system ensures that patients receive the proper daily intake of nutrients based on their body mass index. Moreover, the system could help healthcare professionals access specialist meal recommendations that promote effective patient care without losing the opportunity for treatment. The evaluation results indicated that the overall system usability is at the highest level (equation = 2.35), while the Efficiency and Helpfulness aspects are at the average level. Considering each aspect of the system usability assessment reveals that the outstanding aspects of the system are the Learnability (equation = 2.52) aspect, which achieves the highest level among the five aspects, followed by the Control (equation = 2.48) and Affect (equation = 2.34) aspects.