An increasing number of randomized controlled studies have clearly demonstrated that psychological interventions are effective in the treatment of depression. This can also be seen from the above figure: number of studies from 1970 to 2005 in the world (red line), and in the United States (blue line). A Dutch research group has made a database available of controlled and comparative outcome studies on psychological treatments of depression. The database can be accessed freely through the Internet. The data on the 149 included studies are presented in order to give other researchers access to the studies we collected, and to give background information .....read more »

This is the second post about mass media and psychiatry. The best and most informative news stories about depression are interviews with lay persons that suffer of have suffered this illness. Little attention has been paid to personal life stories about depression and to a gender perspective. The studies that have been done have focused primarily on women. The gendered representation of experiences with depression by men and women in three major Swedish newspapers showed differences and similarities between men and women. The women’s stories were more detailed, relational, emotionally oriented, and embodied. The portrayal of men was less emotional .....read more »

Patients should be informed that the only systematic and critical appraisal of RCTs demonstrates that there is currently no robust evidence to recommend a course of MT to alleviate symptoms of depression. This is the conclusion from a systematic review evaluating the evidence, from randomised clinical trials (RCTs), for the effectiveness of multiple sessions of classical European (Swedish) MT for the treatment of depression. What is massage therapy? Difficult to find out. It is hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. I found some information on taking care of your health. On another site a Dutch man was held responsible for inventing .....read more »

Light can have amazing effects and contrasts of light and dark. They can create beautiful effects or phenomena. This picture above is from a blog with 20 Most Incredible Light Phenomenas for your viewing pleasure. But light can also be used in depression. Bright light therapy is an excellent candidate for inclusion into the therapeutic inventory available for the treatment of nonseasonal depression today, as adjuvant therapy to antidepressant medication. This was the result of a recent systematic review. To me light therapy for nonseasonal depression was new, which inspired the recent post on this blog about this topic. Light therapy can .....read more »

Physical fatigue or loss of energy is included as a single item in the DSM–IV criteria for major depressive disorderSome think of lack of concentration as a mental form of fatigue and lack of concentration is also a symptom of depressionAnhedonia is an inability to experience pleasure from normally pleasurable life events. This is considered to be a core symptom of depression. Some describe it as emotional fatigueAtypical depression is associated with hypersomnia, weight gain or increase in appetite, inertia, and leaden paralysis (i.e., severe lethargy and fatigue; heavy, weighted-down feeling in arms and legs)Patients with atypical depression are significantly .....read more »

After remission on ECT for psychotic depression the combination of nortriptyline and ECT prevented relapse or recurrence in 11 of 16 patients during follow-up of 2 years, of the 17 nortriptyline treated patients only 5 were considered without relapse or recurrence. The mean survival time until relapse was 23 months in the ECT with nortriptyline group and 16 months in the nortriptyline group.ECT or electroshock is the only treatment in psychiatry that is stopped when successful. Usually treatment is continued with an antidepressant or the combination of an antidepressant with lithium. Tricyclic antidepressants are mostly used because most research on .....read more »

Light and depression is of interest in recent scientific publications. On Science Daily the use of bright light elderly group care facilities in the Netherlands leads to improvements. The use of daytime bright lighting to improve the circadian rhythm of elderly persons was associated with modest improvement in symptoms of dementia, and the addition of the use of melatonin resulted in improved sleep, according to a new study.According to one of the authors dr Eus van Someren: "elderly are somewhat less depressed and more active due to the use of bright light in the facilities for the elderly". "Even melatonin .....read more »

A large population-based study found an association of depression status and severity with decreased Vitamin D (serum 25(OH)D) levels and increased serum parathyroid hormone (PTH) levels in older individuals.Levels of 25(OH)D were 14%lower in 169 persons with minor depression and 14% lower in 26 persons with major depressive disorder compared with levels in 1087 control individualsVitamin D is produced by your skin in response to exposure to ultraviolet radiation from natural sunlight.It is nearly impossible to get adequate amounts of vitamin D from your diet. Sunlight exposure is the only reliable way to generate vitamin D in your own body.It .....read more »

Screening for depression through the Internet is feasible and is acceptable to large groups of adolescents. Furthermore, the Major Depression Inventory (MDI) and the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression scale for Children (pdf, small) (CES-D) are reliable and valid instruments that can be used for this screening.By the age of 18 about one in every four adolescents has had at least onedepressive episode, and most adults with recurrent depression have their initial depressive episodes as teenagersTeen depression or depression during adolescence can be hard to discover. There is even a website about depression for children and parents: KidsHealth. It is a .....read more »

The answer is: in the stress system. Stress reactivity might be an important link between a genetic variant of the serotonin transporter gene, stressful life events in early years and depression.There is evidence of interaction between a functional genetic variant of the serotonin transporter gene and life events. Depression is not based on a simple gene or a cluster of genes. But on a gene and environment interaction. So the risk of getting a depression is higher when a certain genetic variant of the serotonin transporter gene is present in the presence of life stress, especially in early life. .....read more »