Treatment-resistant depression

With the progress of society, people are under increasing pressure, and various mental illnesses have arisen. Refractory depression has become a problem for many people. Due to the different conditions and physical and mental development of the patients, and because this is a common mental illness in society, the effect of drug treatment is not obvious, psychologists have become a popular profession in today's society.

With the prevalence of refractory depression, people have no effective way to prevent it and can only mediate and treat it through medication and psychological therapy. Therefore, we should pay more attention to it in our daily life and keep ourselves in a good mood at all times, so that mental illness will not find us.

At present, there are still many different opinions in the medical community about refractory depression. Its cause has not yet been clarified, and the progression of the disease presented by patients is also different. The generally accepted definition of refractory depression is that patients who have not responded well to adequate doses and courses of at least two antidepressants with different mechanisms of action, and who are treated with an effective antidepressant for a sufficient course, still have little effect.

Among depression patients in my country, 30% do not respond to antidepressant treatment, which is known as refractory depression. Based on this calculation, among depression patients in my country, the number of patients with refractory depression may reach 12 million to 21 million. Common refractory depression mainly includes the following three situations.

1. Difficult depression

This is mainly due to the nature of depression itself or other broader medical conditions that make it difficult to treat, such as psychotic depressive disorder, chronic depression or personality defects of the patient himself. In addition, refractory depression may also occur if the doctor does not prescribe appropriate medications or treatments that the patient cannot tolerate.

2. Treatment-resistant depression

It mainly refers to depression in which patients still have little effect or only minimal effect after receiving two or more antidepressant drugs with different chemical structures and mechanisms of action, in sufficient doses and for sufficient courses of treatment.

3. Refractory depression

For patients with refractory depression, antidepressants are often ineffective, and patients may also have a lack of tolerance to antidepressants.

Through the above situation, we understand that drug treatment will not have a very obvious effect, so psychologists have become a hot industry nowadays. As society progresses, mental illness has become a problem, and stress has become a common word among people. People cannot effectively release their stress, which leads to refractory depression.