Depression Treatment: New methods

In a study, almost half of the people who wore an antidepressant skin patch recovered after only six weeks, and many of them "showed remarkable improvement much sooner," according to researcher Alexander Bodkin.

"The patch worked, and worked rapidly without toxic side effects. The potential is very exciting." Bodkin and his colleagues, working at six medical centers, completed the first tests of the patch in 1998. The centers included Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital in Belmont, where Bodkin did his research.

These tests involved 177 people; 89 of them wore patches with an antidepression drug and 87 wore placebo patches with no drug. Six weeks later, 42 percent of those who wore the active patch (37 people), no longer felt the pangs of Depression. The patients continued to wear their patches for three months after their symptoms disappeared.

"Some of these people couldn't even remember how it felt to be depressed," Bodkin comments. "It could be the best treatment for about 20 percent of patients with Depression, an illness that strikes an estimated 10 percent of people each year in the U.S. alone, and is one of the leading causes of disability in the world."

Lithium drugs found to reduce suicide

Finding may help millions who struggle with potentially lethal mood disorders.

Researchers who wondered about the effectiveness of lithium drugs in treating patients with severe Depression analyzed 22 studies involving 5,647 patients.

The scientists, working at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital in Belmont, found through their analysis that those who took the drug showed a nine-fold lower rate of suicide compared to those who did not. "The evidence we have provides strong, consistent support that suicides are dramatically lower with than without long-term lithium treatment," says Ross Baldessarini, a Harvard professor of psychiatry who participated in the study. He estimates that 10 million people in the United States with major mood disorders could be affected by these results.
Baldessarini and colleagues Leonardo Tondo and John Hennen reported their results in recent issues of the international medical journal Acta Pyschiatrica Scandinavica and in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.