When Depression Drugs Don’t Help, Talking Might

Talk therapy may be a helpful supplemental treatment for people with depression who have not responded to medication, a new study from the United Kingdom suggests.

Researchers found that people with depression who had not improved despite taking antidepressants were three times more likely to experience a reduction in their depression symptoms if talk therapy was added to their treatment regimen compared with those who continued to take only antidepressants.

The study is one of the first large trials to test the effectiveness of talk therapy given in tandem with antidepressants, the researchers said.

Up to two-thirds of people with depression don’t respond fully to antidepressant treatment, and the findings suggest a way to help this group, the researchers said.

“Until now, there was little evidence to help clinicians choose the best next step treatment for those patients whose symptoms do not respond to standard drug treatments,” study researcher Nicola Wiles of the University of Bristol’s Centre for Mental Health, Addiction and Suicide Research said in a statement.

The study followed patients for one year. Future studies should examine the effectiveness of this treatment combination over the long term, as patients with depression can relapse after treatment, the researchers said. In addition, because some patients did not improve substantially when talk therapy was added, further research is needed to find alternative treatments for this group, Wiles added.

The study included about 470 people with depression who had not responded to antidepressants after six weeks of treatment.

About half received cognitive behavioral therapy - a type of talk therapy - in addition to their usual antidepressant treatment, and half continued antidepressants without the addition of talk therapy.

After six months, about 46 per cent of patients in the talk therapy group experienced at least a 50 per cent reduction in their depressive symptoms. By contrast, 22 per cent of people in the antidepressant group improved by the same amount. By the 12-month mark, both groups experienced similar rates of improvement.

Often, talk therapy is more difficult to access than medication, the researchers said. And people may not be able to afford the treatment if their health insurance does not cover it. Only about 25 percent of Americans with depression have received talk therapy during the past year, they said.

Kissing Does Spread Mono
Mono lives up to its name as the “kissing disease,” a new study says. The research, which followed 546 college students from freshman to senior year, found the only factor that increased the risk for catching mono was deep kissing.

Students who reported deep kissing, regardless of whether or not the kissing was tied to sex, were more likely to develop mono than those who did not kiss or have sex, the researchers said.

Other factors, including the student’s diet and amount of exercise and stress, failed to increase the risk, the researchers said.

Caused by the Epstein–Barr virus, mononucleosis (mono for short) is spread through contact with an infected person’s saliva. It can also be spread through coughing, sneezing or sharing food, but the disease is not as infectious as a cold virus, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Many people are exposed to the virus before they reach adulthood and develop immunity to it. Symptoms include sore throat, fatigue, headache, fever decreased appetite, and swollen tonsils. However, some people develop mono without showing symptoms.

Before the study began, the researchers tested all the students’ blood for antibodies against the Epstein–Barr virus. About 63 per cent of the students tested positive for the antibodies, meaning they’d had mono in the past. The remainder, 143 students, visited the university clinic every 8 weeks for an average of three years, to test if they had developed the illness.

During this time, doctors diagnosed 66 of the students with mono. Of these, 59 showed symptoms. Previously, it had not been clear how often people in this age group developed symptoms when they got mono.

Students with mono were sick for an average of 17 days, but were capable of spreading the virus for much longer - about 5 months. The rate of infection was higher during freshman year (26 cases per 100 people) compared to the other three years (10 cases per 100 people per year).