Treatment Online

More Great Follow Up on STAR*D
> 3/27/2006 3:06:27 PM

Today's Los Angeles Times has a great follow up to the reports released last weak as part of the Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (STAR*D) study. The article addresses many of the issues at play in depression treatment, and specifically in treating depression with medications. Some of the stories main points are worth repeating here:

"The problem is not that the drugs don't work. They do. The challenge is we can't predict who will get well with what medicine," says Dr. Andrew Leuchter, vice chairman of the department of psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA...

"Depression is no different from epilepsy or diabetes or hypertension: No one treatment is sufficient for a majority of patients in all medical diseases," says Dr. Madhukar Trivedi, the head of a recent study on antidepressants and a psychiatry professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas...

"Most depression is treated in primary care. And while they do a good job with a lot of things, they often don't follow up as well as psychiatrists do," says Dr. Thomas Schwartz, a professor of psychiatry at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, N.Y. "Part of our job is to come up with alternatives for our patients. Often we end up adding medications so they work together."

There is a great deal more, so click through to the link above to check out the rest of the article.

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