Active clinical trials for "Depressive Disorder"

The cost-effectiveness of a new, guideline oriented sequential inpatient - outpatient treatment model will be investigated. Secondary outcomes are: patient satisfaction, practitioners' satisfaction and influence on work.

This study will evaluate the effectiveness of culturally adapted depression treatment for reducing depressive symptoms and improving adherence to diabetes self-care regimens in Hispanics with depression and diabetes.

This study involves collaboration between McLean Hospital, Geriatric Medicine at the Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA) and other sites within the Partners and Harvard Medical School network. The investigators plan to recruit individuals 55 to 89 years old with treatment resistant depression. Someone with "treatment resistant" depression for this study may be someone who still has sad or low feelings and thoughts even though he/she is taking an antidepressant medication for at least 8 weeks to help relieve his/her depression. During the study, subjects will gradually add memantine hydrochloride in dosages up to 20 mg/day for 8 weeks to their standard antidepressant treatment. The investigators are doing this research study to help answer 3 questions: Do older adults with treatment resistant Major Depression have lower levels of a chemical in the brain called NAAG than older adults without Major Depression? Do older adults with naturally low NAAG levels do better on memantine hydrochloride treatment than older adults with higher amounts of this chemical on memantine hydrochloride treatment? Do older adults with treatment resistant depression have more problems with memory and concentration than older adults without depression? The investigators are also interested in looking at electrical and neuronal activity of the brain, spiritual beliefs, and fatigue in relationship to depression. The investigators hypothesize that: Older individuals with treatment resistant Major Depression will have lower levels of NAAG compared with age-matched older control subjects. Older adults with treatment resistant depression and low NAAG levels will do better on treatment with memantine hydrochloride than older adults on memantine with higher NAAG levels. Older adults with depression will do better on tests of attention and executive functioning after treatment with memantine hydrochloride. Healthy controls will do better on tests of attention and executive functioning than older adults with depression.

The study is prospective, open, randomized, crossover in steady state and the volunteers received multiple doses of the test drug and the reference drug (two periods of drug administration after standardized meals).

Recent research has demonstrated a relationship between depression and immune system activity, specifically proinflammatory cytokine activity. Although experimentally-induced immune activation leads to increases in depressed mood, the neural correlates associated with these changes have remained largely unexplored. Based on relationships between cytokine activity, depression, and heightened physical and social pain sensitivity, I propose to investigate the effect of proinflammatory cytokine activation on the neural correlates of socially painful experience that may contribute to depression. Our previous work has shown that the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), typically associated with physical pain distress, also plays a role in the distressing feelings associated with social rejection or social loss. Moreover, recent pilot data has revealed that individuals with elevated levels of baseline proinflammatory cytokines report feeling more distressed and show more dACC activity during social rejection. To investigate the causal role that cytokines may play in the heightened social pain sensitivity that can contribute to depression, participants will be randomly assigned to receive either endotoxin (which increases proinflammatory cytokine activity) or placebo. Subsequently, participants will complete a neuroimaging study in which they will be rejected during an online ball-tossing game. We hypothesize that individuals exposed to endotoxin will report more social distress and depression following rejection and will show more dACC reactivity during rejection. The proposed study is the first to investigate the effect of systemic inflammation on neural reactivity related to social and affective processes that may increase the risk of depression.

Aripiprazole has been approved by the FDA for augmenting ineffective/partially effective oral antidepressant therapy in patients suffering from major depression. The mechanism by which this augmentation is achieved is not known. This study has been designed to test the hypothesis that the primary mechanism of action of aripiprazole (ARP) antidepressant augmentation is through the dopaminergic pathway. Two positron emission tomography (PET) scan procedures and a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan will be used to test this hypothesis.

This study will implement a treatment for depression in a nursing home setting.

The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness of a simple marketing intervention in changing attitudes towards depression and its treatment among university students.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether Integrated Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or Twelve Step Facilitation Therapy is most effective for treatment of dually diagnosed veterans with depressive and substance use disorders.

The study aims to explore whether an online compassion-based guided self-help intervention is perceived as acceptable to people with heterogeneous skin conditions, in terms of retention rates and explicit feedback. The study also aims to investigate the feasibility of providing online compassion-based self-help and email guidance. Changes in depression, self-compassion and skin-related distress will be assessed to give an estimate of likely effect sizes for future research