Antidepressant Drug Treatment For Preventing Recurrence In Depression

clipped from www.sciencedaily.com Does It Help To Continue Antidepressant Drug Treatment For Preventing Recurrence In Depression? Apparently it doesn't help much, according to a study by Dutch investigators. Maintenance antidepressant (AD) medication is the most commonly used preventive strategy in a highly recurrent disease, i.e. depression. Little is known about the discontinuation of maintenance AD use and the association with recurrence in daily clinical practice. The purpose of this study was to examine the discontinuation rate of maintenance AD in daily clinical practice in recurrently depressed patients and the associated risk of recurrence. Prospectively AD maintenance medication and recurrence were examined in 172 euthymic patients with recurrent depression. AD user profiles before recurrence (nonusers, intermittent users, continuous users) were examined and related to recurrence over a 2-year follow-up period.