Medication for Depression and Anxiety: Don't Give Up Easily

Antidepressants “take time” to work in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and might take even longer in patients with anxiety disorders. But how long? When should clinicians switch medications? To learn more, researchers examined a pooled clinical trial database of 4357 patients receiving escitalopram for MDD (14 studies), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD; 6 studies), or social anxiety disorder (3 studies).

The researchers analyzed onset of treatment effect (≥20% improvement in symptoms) and attainment of response (≥50% improvement) at week 8 for MDD and GAD and at week 12 for social anxiety disorder. The probability of ultimately responding decreased for each week with no measured change. Thus, for MDD, if “onset” began at week …