OBJECTIVE: The authors compared the efficacy of standard-of-care treatment plus intranasal esketamine or placebo for rapid reduction of symptoms of major depression, including suicidality, among individuals at imminent suicide risk. METHOD: In a double-blind, multicenter, proof-of-concept study, 68 participants were randomly assigned to receive esketamine (84 mg) or placebo twice weekly for 4...
Due to the heterogeneity of depressive symptoms-which can include depressed mood, anhedonia, negative cognitive biases, and altered activity levels-researchers often use a combination of depression rating scales to assess symptoms. This study sought to identify unidimensional constructs measured across rating scales for depression and to evaluate these constructs across clinical trials of a...
MindfulnessApril 12, 2018Birgit Mayer, Marike G. Polak, Danielle Remmerswaal
In two studies, a possible mediation effect was tested of cognitive interpretation bias in the relation between respectively dispositional mindfulness and acceptance, on the one hand, and symptoms of depression and anxiety, on the other hand. An undergraduate student sample (N = 133; 86% female, Mage = 19.8) and a convenience community sample (N = 186; 66% female, Mage = 36.5) were examined by...
BACKGROUND: The glutamatergic modulator ketamine has rapid antidepressant effects in individuals with major depressive disorder and bipolar depression. Thus, modulating glutamatergic transmission may be critical to effectively treating depression, though the mechanisms by which this occurs are not fully understood. METHODS: This double-blind, crossover, placebo-controlled study analyzed data...
This single case study examined symptom change in the treatment of a 22-year-old Caucasian female college student presenting with anxious and depressive symptoms and maladaptive coping strategies in the context of an interpersonal dispute. The treatment integrated mindfulness skills training with interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) to treat symptoms of anxiety, depression, overall total symptoms,...
Ketamine research in depression has mostly used intravenous, weight-based approaches, which are difficult to translate clinically. Intranasal (IN) ketamine is a promising alternative but no controlled data has been published on the feasibility, safety and potential efficacy of repeated IN ketamine treatments. This randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled pilot study compared a 4-week course...
This study examines self-criticism as a mechanism through which compassion meditation reduces depressive symptoms in low-income African American men and women (N = 59) who had recently attempted suicide. After completing several measures, including the Levels of Self-Criticism Scale and Beck Depression Inventory-II, participants were randomly assigned to receive either a six-session compassion...
Background: Natural speech analytics has seen some improvements over recent years, and this has opened a window for objective and quantitative diagnosis in psychiatry. Here, we used a machine learning algorithm applied to natural speech to ask whether language properties measured before psilocybin for treatment-resistant can predict for which patients it will be effective and for which it will...
Patients with treatment‐resistant depression who received intranasal esketamine as adjunctive therapy with an antidepressant experienced greater symptom improvement than patients receiving adjunctive placebo, a multiphase study with 67 participants has found. The antidepressant effect seen in the study was dose‐related, and adverse events led to study discontinuation in only a small number of...
Purpose: We undertook a randomized controlled trial to assess the efficacy of group-based behavioral activation with mindfulness (BAM) for treating subthreshold depression in primary care in Hong Kong. Methods: We recruited adult patients aged 18 years or older with subthreshold depression from public primary care clinics and randomly assigned them to a BAM intervention group or a usual care...