When Medication Fails, Combination Therapy May Help Depressed Teens

For the 40 percent of clinically depressed teenagers who do not respond to their first antidepressant treatment, a combination of medication and psychotherapy has an excellent chance of providing successful treatment.

Research published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association studied 334 severely depressed adolescents who had failed to respond to an initial eight-week round of antidepressants. After changing medications and adding cognitive behavioral therapy for a 12 weeks, 55 percent of subjects reported improvements. Meanwhile, simply switching medications without adding psychotherapy produced improvement in 41 percent of subjects.

The report notes that because about 60 percent of patients do respond to the initial treatment, odds are favorable teens will undergo "substantial clinical improvement" if not on the first, by the second try.

This research supports previous findings showing that the majority of depressed patients are curable in one to four treatment steps and supporting the role of combination therapy in treating depressed teens.

FULL TEXT: Switching to Another SSRI or to Venlafaxine With or Without Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Adolescents With SSRI-Resistant Depression