Treating Depression: Patients were not Healing With the First Medicine That I Tried had A Good Chance of Success The Second Time

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(AP) - The largest study ever done on treating depression has found that patients were not healing with the first medicine that I tried had a good chance of success the second time.

A third of those who added or changed medication were healing from illness mill which is in first place in the American mental health problems, researchers said.

This is good news, but overall is more encouraging, say doctors. When they saw the results earlier, new findings have shown that half of people suffering from depression can overcome them - not only improving its symptoms - with adequate medication.

"The goal here was to find treatments that will help people to insanatoaseasca not only feel good," said Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health. "We have safe and effective treatments."

His agency paid $ 35 million for this study, which involved thousands of people in the United States of America and was praised worldwide as an international test of popular drugs that have received only limited testing so far.

The study found little difference between the 5 drugs tested Celexa, Zoloft, wellbutrin, effexor and Buspar - and not designed to compare them. All drugs have proved effective and relatively safe. The clear message, doctors said, was that antidepressants would be given 6 to 12 weeks chance to go and if one of them goes, should be tried next.

"It is important not to give the first treatment that does not bear fruit," or causes side effects, said a leader of the study, Dr. John Rush of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

Two reports from the study were published Thursday in the British Medical Journal (New England Journal of Medicine).

Nearly 15 million Americans each year suffer depression, which doctors say that is an emotional cancer that is put "in remission" than cured.

"We are talking about a very real public health challenge," Insel said. "This is the major cause of disability of Americans between 15 and 44 years.

Two dozen antidepressants are on the market, 189 million prescriptions were filled last year. Evidence of their effectiveness is limited, and the government recently ordered stronger warnings on the trends in youth suicide in rare cases. The risk in adults is still under study.

The study tested Celexa, a drug of Forest Labs, a newer type of antidepressant called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor or SSRI, for that is very easy to take a medicine every day.

A third of those who took this antidepressant has been healing, although generally took higher doses and were monitored closely than most patients, researchers said several months ago.

The new research, step 2 of the study was done on people who were not healing the first time. They had depression for 16 years on average and two thirds had other mental or psychological problems.

Of this group, 727 chose to move from Celexa to a different medication and were advised to take or Zoloft, another SSRI made by Pfizer Inc., wellbutrin, a non-SSRI antidepressant made by GlaxoSmithKline, or viagra, an antidepressant made by Wyeth that works on different brain chemical than the target of SSRI's.

A fourth escaped symptoms in 14 weeks.

Other 565 patients chose to add a second drug to Celexa and have been given or wellbutrin or Buspar, an anti-anxiety drug made by Bristol-Myers Squibb, which may increase the effectiveness of SSRIs sites.

At 14 weeks, almost one third had no symptoms. Those taking wellbutrin symptoms and had fewer side effects than those taking Buspar.

The study will continue to go to step 3 and even attempts to step 4 treatment-and to analyze genes to see if some models out of private medicine.

"It is possible that in the near future to be able to predict who responds to what kind of medicine," said another leader of the study, Dr. Madhukar Trivedi of UT Southwestern.

In an editorial in the Journal of England, Dr. David Rubinow of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, wrote that the study is encouraging, because half of people suffering from this disease were healing because of drugs.

4 of 10 people in this study were unemployed and everything so many have had medical insurance. Without access to treatment and less stigma businesses to depression, millions will continue to suffer, he wrote it.

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