International Consensus Statement on How to Manage “Difficult to Treat Depression” Published

While there are many treatments that have been shown to be effective for treating depression (e.g. psychotherapy, medication and neurostimulation), unfortunately a proportion of patients don’t respond to two or more treatments. This has previously been described as “treatment resistant depression (TRD)”. This term has many problems. One question is who or what is “resistant”? The other major issue is with the concept of TRD in that it implies endless treatment trials, one after the other, desperately searching for “the answer”. This can lead to both patient and clinicians feeling increasingly hopeless. An international group of experts in the management of depression, led by NCMD clinical academic Professor McAllister-Williams, have just published a paper that argues that the term “difficult to treat depression (DTD)” is semantically better than TRD. Critically DTD also implies a different approach to the management of depression.

You can read the published paper here.

View the press release.

View the graphical abstract.