Anti-psychotic drugs useful for severe depression

Treatment with anti-psychotic agents, such as Risperdal (risperidone) or Geodon (ziprasidone), is useful for patients with severe depression who have failed to respond to conventional therapy, new researcher suggests. However, it may take a while to find one that works.

In patients with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder, treatment with olanzapine, risperidone, quetiapine or ziprasidone is often beneficial, according to researchers. 

Lead investigator Dr. James G. Barbee told AMN Health that the “strategy of using (these drugs) as antidepressant augmentation agents was very effective—65 percent of the patients responded to one drug or the other...This offers hope to the many patients who have not responded to other forms of antidepressant therapy.”

As reported in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, Barbee of Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, New Orleans and colleagues describe their review of 49 patients given various anti-psychotic agents to control their severe depression.

Individual response rates ranged from 57 percent of patients given Zyprexa (olanzapine) to 10 percent given Geodon.

An important finding, Barbee added, “was a validation of the principle of ‘try, try again.’” Even when one anti-psychotic did not work, there was a good probability of success with subsequent trials of other drugs.

SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, July 2004.

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