Change in Drugs May Help Beat Depression

A new study on depression treatment reveals that patients and doctors should not give up on their treatments if the first drug fails to improve the patients’ condition. It has been found that most patients who add another drug to their regime or change their drug to another one can go into remission.

The new study is implicating that you should not give up your treatment if the drugs start causing side effects or don’t start improving depression.

It has always been known that one size doesn’t fit all and that appropriate dosage needs to be matched to go into a remission. If a 12-week regime with one drug doesn’t work, another drug should be added. The researchers who led the study say that the revelation is important as it gives hope for controlling depression.

The most important thing about the revelation is that the trial did not look at the drugs’ response but at the full recovery. In the study, participants were first given Celexa (serotonin reuptake inhibitor-SSRI) and those who failed to respond to Celexa were given one of the three other drugs Wellbutrin (non-SSRI), Zoloft (SSRI) or Effexor (non-SSRI). About one quarter of the participants managed to achieve total remission, no matter what kind of the 2nd drug was used.
The biggest problem with depression is that about half people who suffer from it, don’t even receive treatment and from those who do, about 40% get the "evidence-based" treatment.