Patient Preference
Patients are becoming more informed about depressive disorders and their treatment. Still, some patients are adamantly opposed to medication, whereas others are equally…

Maintenance-Phase Treatment
Maintenance treatment aims at preventing new episodes (recurrences) and thus is appropriate for recurrent or chronic depression but not for single-episode major depressive disorder. Maintenance medication is effective in virtually all studies…

Continuation treatment typically lasts 4-9 months. The length of the continuation period, in theory, depends on the length of the prior episode. Continuation treatment aims at preventing the return of the most recent episode until…

Treatment With Medication and Formal Psychotherapy (Combined Treatment)
It is often common practice to combine medication and formal psychotherapy at the outset. However, for many patients, the efficacy…

Treatment strategies involve the selection of the initial treatment and, for those who do not respond, subsequent treatments to be used. Tactics are the ways these…

Making the Diagnosis and Choosing the Treatment
The initial choice of psychotherapy, medication, the combination of psychotherapy and medication, or ECT depends in part on the…

Introduction

Supported in part by National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Center Grant MH-30915 to the Department…