Most patients treated for depression with medication should continue taking it after their gloom has lifted, new research suggests.
Scientists over a decade have discovered that depression recurs repeatedly in four of five patients. But many doctors deal with it as an episode, prescribing drugs for a mere two or three months.
A review of 30 years of studies, in The Lancet, suggests that this is the wrong approach. In the analysis, led by researchers at Oxford University in England, patients who stayed on antidepressants were half as likely to have another bout of depression as those who stopped taking medication.
The 31 studies reviewed in the new research involved a total of 4,410 patients who had done well on short-term antidepressant therapy and were then randomly assigned either continued drug treatment or fake pills.
AP