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5 papers
This paper is a careful review of research about treatment-resistant depression. The authors looked through medical studies to see how doctors define this kind of depression, what makes it hard to assess, and which treatments have been tried. They describe drug strategies like adding lithium or thyroid hormone, switching antidepressant…
Researchers ran a clinical trial that directly compared ketamine treatment with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in people whose major depression had not improved with other treatments and who did not have psychosis. The trial found that ketamine was “noninferior” to ECT, which means ketamine worked at least as well as ECT…
Depression is a prevalent psychiatric disorder that often leads to poor quality of life and impaired functioning. Treatment during the acute phase of a major depressive episode aims to help the patient reach a remission state and eventually return to their baseline level of functioning. Pharmacotherapy, especially selective serotonin reuptake…
This secondary analysis of a multisite randomized trial compared cognitive effects of repeated IV ketamine (six treatments) and electroconvulsive therapy (nine sessions) in 365 people with treatment-resistant depression. After the 3-week treatment course, the ECT group did worse than the ketamine group on four objective cognitive tests (P < .001).…
This American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry guide explains what depression looks like in children and teens, why it may happen, how it is diagnosed, and how serious the risks can be. It says depression is a real illness that is more common in adolescents (ages 12–18) and can…
