Active clinical trials for "Depressive Disorder"

It has been convincingly demonstrated that electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) works better and sooner than antidepressants in the treatment of certain subtypes of depression. Given this effectiveness, it would be unfortunate not to give ECT to patients with good response chances as this could substantially shorten the length of a severe depressive episode. Instead of going through all possible psychopharmacological treatment steps, ECT could be proposed much earlier as a treatment option for those patients who might have good response chances. This would be a great advantage for the severely depressed patient, with a decreased disease-burden and hospitalization duration. However, up to now, objective and reliable predictive factors for good ECT response have not yet been established. Clinical characteristics such as psychomotor retardation, psychotic features and age have often been used to predict the outcome of ECT, but there is too little evidence to consider these as strong predictive factors. The current project is designed to allow better prediction of ECT-response. The investgators base their selection of predictors on clinical impression and previous research results. The predictive capacity of psychomotor functioning, psychotic symptoms and several biomarkers will be investigated. With these clinical and biological patient and depression characteristics, the investigators aim to develop a decision making tool that will allow a more accurate indication of ECT. The investigators also investigate ways to predict whether or not a patient will have a good response when treatment has already started, based on an early improvement of psychomotor functioning. Another subject of great importance is predicting and preventing side-effects. When patients at risk for lasting cognitive side-effects can be identified early in the treatment course, treatment can be adjusted to prevent persistence of memory problems. Therefore, the second part of the study focuses on identifying people at risk for cognitive side effects early in the treatment course.

The purpose of this study is to explore the way the antidepressant concentration (amount of medication) in the blood changes due to the physiological changes in the body (i.e., changes in metabolism, hormones and body fluid) during pregnancy and postpartum and the impact of genetic factors on the degree of these changes. Changes in antidepressant concentration are important to monitor, as decreases in antidepressant concentration may lead to less than therapeutic drug levels, which may cause an increase in mood symptoms or recurrence of depressive episodes. Increases in antidepressant concentration have the potential to lead to increased side effects. The study team is hoping to better understand the course of these changes across pregnancy and postpartum and how an individual's genetic makeup impacts these changes with the goal of developing guidelines to optimize antidepressant treatment of pregnant women.

The purpose of this study is to understand if there is a relationship between the way that emotions are regulated by the brain and the way that heart rate is regulated by the brain. The study also seeks to understand whether having depression changes the way that emotions and heart rate are regulated.

The purpose of this study is to research the effects of ketamine on brain function in patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). This study is an ancillary MRI neuroimaging study being conducted in patients with MDD who are enrolled in a separate clinical trial. Healthy control volunteers are also enrolled. No drug or other intervention is given as part of this protocol per se. To study brain activity related to emotion, the study team will use a technology called functional MRI (fMRI), which is a method for evaluating the flow of blood in the brain using a powerful magnet. fMRI does not involve exposure to radiation. Patients will be shown a sample of images on a computer screen designed to bring about an emotional reaction. The MRI machine will then take a number of pictures of your head. By computer analysis, this machine is able to create a picture of your brain's activity. There are several tasks during scanning that involve looking at various images that represent different emotions, and the study team will be monitoring brain activity during these tasks. Patients will be scanned before and 24 hours after receiving ketamine (as part of a separate study) to analyze treatments effects. These scans are compared to depressed patients who did not receive ketamine, as well as to healthy controls.

An effective treatment adherence was a key to make the treatment success, some reports had shown that psychologicl factors impact patients adherence seriously,however, in China, the researches were only limited to depression and diabetes,diabetes distress was neglected. Some western studies had demonstrated the impact of diabetes distress on diabetes. Thus, we hypothesized that: 1.perhaps our present depression-oriented health education was inadequate to promote patients' adherence, diabetes distress might played a more important part than depression in patients' treatment adherence. 2. there might be a high prevalence of diabetes distress in Chinese type 2 diabetes; so, the comparative study between diabetes distress and depresion was conducted. Objectives: to explore the relationship of diabetes-related distress and depression，and to compare the influence of diabetes distress and depression on treatment adherence in Chinese type 2 diabetes . Research design and method:we surveyed 200 type 2 diabetic patients from 2 third-class hospitals using the Diabetes Distress Scale, Zung Self-rating Depression Scale, and Revised Treatment Adherence in Diabetes Questionnaire (RADQ)simultaneously.

Evaluation of a 6-months treatment with Gladem Experiences with the internet for performing a postmarketing study (PMS) trial

The aim of the present study is to compare an intervention consisting of Family Psychoeducation (FPE) to an active control intervention of social support for relatives of patients with a diagnosis of major depression.

The investigators will determine whether an acute dose of nicotine, in the form of the nicotine lozenge, impacts brain and behavioral measures of mood and reward responsiveness in individuals with major depressive disorder.

This Non-Interventional Study (NIS) is intended to evaluate the duration of treatment with an initial antidepressant taken as monotherapy in patients in whom treatment was changed because of suboptimal response at physician's discretion. This will address unmet medical needs of patients with a depressive episode related to RDD (ICD-10, Version 2010), who have failed to respond adequately to initial treatment with an antidepressant and contribute to an understanding of the usual approaches that physicians adopt to monitor initial treatment efficacy in RDD (Recurrent Depressive Disorder). The study will also focus on second-line therapy in hard to treat patients, describing the different pharmacotherapeutic strategies.

The current study will test the causal relationship between elevated levels of cortisol and the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR) as these factors influence sensitivity to environmental threat. The investigators predict that carriers of the short allele of the serotonin transporter gene who have elevated cortisol levels will be most sensitive to threatening environments, whereas carriers of the long allele who do not have elevated cortisol (placebo subjects) will be least sensitive.