Friday, April 24, 2009

Depressed and Coping: Treating Depression When Medication Fails

Various lifestyle approaches make drugs more effective or help relieve depression on their own.

James Russo has wrestled for some 60 years with his "black dog" of depression, since the days back in high school when a B left him feeling like an utter failure. He tried Valium, a tricyclic antidepressant, and Prozac before finding some relief in Paxil. Still, says Russo, 74, of Bernville, Pa.: "My disease lives in the corner of my mind, sometimes sleepy enough to let me enjoy a little optimism but ever ready to ruin a day or a week or a year." What has become abundantly clear in the antidepressant age—the drugs are now the most commonly prescribed medications in the country—is that depression is terribly difficult, if not impossible, to cure. Many primary-care doctors, who treat 80 percent of depressed people, labor under the assumption that a prescription is a panacea. But antidepressants completely alleviate symptoms in only about 35 to 40 percent of people compared with 15 to 20 percent of those who take a placebo—a fact not publicized in pharmaceutical ads. And about 70 percent of people who successfully beat one bout can expect to face another.

"We just don't have one magical pill that will do the whole trick," says Madhukar Trivedi, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. He recently participated in the government-funded "Star*D" trial of more than 4,000 patients with difficult-to-treat depression, which showed that success rates of antidepressants could be increased but that it sometimes took four tries of various drugs plus therapy. Even then, in 30 percent of those who completed the yearlong study, symptoms still lingered. And 5 percent of study participants, according to new Star*D data published last week, actually had a worsening of their symptoms while on an antidepressant. In an effort to better combat treatment-resistant depression, the Food and Drug Administration last month approved a combination pill for those who aren't helped by antidepressants alone. The drug, called Symbyax, combines the antidepressant Prozac and the antipsychotic Zyprexa.

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