Posted by jrbecker on June 3, 2003, at 11:26:56
http://www.healthscout.com/template.asp?page=newsdetail&id=8006085&ap=1
Controversial Drug Helps Depression
PALO ALTO (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Fifteen percent of the 18 million people living with depression experience symptoms such as paranoia and hallucinations. This type of depression, called psychotic depression, is hard to treat with standard medication. Now a controversial treatment is changing the lives of people with this illness.Just a few months ago, this scene was unthinkable for Isabel Camarillo. "I didn't want to live at all. I was always thinking of how to kill myself," she tells Ivanhoe.
Camarillo started hearing voices as a teenager. "It was like they were controlling my life," she says. They didn't go away.
Just a few months ago, at age 22, Camarillo tried to kill herself. She has psychotic depression. An illness Stanford University psychopharmacologist Alan Schatzberg, M.D., says is hard to treat and even harder to live with.
"They have misperceptions about reality. They will have odd beliefs, such beliefs as, 'I am dying, I am sick, I have lost everything,'" Dr. Schatzberg tells Ivanhoe.
Shock therapy has been the only real help for psychotic depression, but the stigma and side effects make it hard for patients to accept. Now, the controversial abortion drug RU-486 is making an impact. The hormone cortisol is found in high levels in patients with psychotic depression. By blocking that hormone, RU-486 resets an area of the brain that is not working.
Dr. Schatzberg says, "You might be able to avoid the use of shock treatments for lots of patients and treat them with a pill."
Two-thirds of patients on the drug have significant improvement after just one week.
"It changed me completely. No matter if you think you're never going to be okay, there's always a way. I think I found my way already," says Camarillo.
Dr. Schatzberg says just one week of treatment with RU-486 had benefits that lasted for weeks in the patients who received it. Current studies are underway to determine how long the benefits last. The FDA has put the drug on fast-track approval as a treatment for psychotic depression.
This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.
If you would like more information, please contact:
Jennifer Keller, Ph.D.
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Stanford University
401 Quarry Road
Stanford, CA 90345-5723
(650) 724-0070
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