View clinical trials related to Depression.
Filter by:The purpose of this study is to address the United States Office of AIDS Research highest priorities: improving the workforce, reducing health disparities, and addressing HIV comorbidities. UCLA will randomize the government-funded community health workers (CHW) from 16 clinics in matched rural areas in the Eastern Cape in South Africa to either: 1) the Accountable Condition (AC) in which additional monitoring and accountability systems that Philani routinely uses are implemented or 2) a Control Condition (CC), of initial Philani training, but ongoing supervision and monitoring consistent with local government practices.
This pilot study aims to investigate the potential role of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in the treatment of treatment-resistant major depressive disorder (MDD). tDCS is a noninvasive brain stimulation technique which has been utilized for the treatment of major depression in several studies, both as a primary and adjunctive treatment. The treatment will be administered under the supervision of a physician with experience in administering the treatment and monitoring for complications. This will be a prospective "adaptive tDCS stimulation" open label research study. Participants will receive 20 minute sessions of up to 4 milliamps (mA) transcutaneous electrical stimulation sessions over 4 to 6 weeks. Building on the theory that greater current "dose" may be a significant factor in determining efficacy, this study aims to determine whether higher tDCS current doses lead to greater improvements in depressive symptoms in this population of patients with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder.
Major depressive disorder (MDD) affects around 7% of the population yearly. Although effective treatments are available, only around half of all patients participating in clinical trials respond to 6 to 12 weeks of antidepressant treatment. Given these high failure rates, the ability to predict as early as possible whether a patient is (un)likely to respond would be of great value, as it would enable physicians to change treatment strategies faster. Early improvement has consistently been found to be a strong predictor of later response. However, misclassification is still quite common, with perhaps a third of those who do not show early improvement going on to respond. Conversely, a substantial proportion of those who do show early improvement do not go on to respond. One possibility for improving the predictive power of early improvement is to examine individual symptoms, rather than the total score on a depression rating scale. Some items, for example, could reflect antidepressant side effects (e.g. gastrointestinal symptoms) and may not be very predictive. The proposed project aims to examine the relationship between early improvement in individual symptoms and response to antidepressants in a very large patient sample. This large sample size makes it possible to use more rigorous methods than previous studies, such as the use of cross-validation to confirm the findings. It also makes it possible to examine a large set of predictors, including possible interactions among early-improving symptoms and between symptoms and demographic factors like age and gender. The added value of individual symptoms over and above using the total symptom score alone will also be examined, as well as possible differences between different antidepressant classes. The project will use penalized (lasso) regression, which is well-suited to analyzing data with a large number of (potentially highly correlated) predictors. In the primary analysis, response after 6 weeks of treatment will be predicted. In secondary analyses, remission at week 6 and response and remission at week 12 will also be predicted.
Suicide, suicide attempts and depression are major social problems. The present research program focuses on the relationship between electrodermal hyporeactivity, as measured by the ElectroDermal Orienting Reactivity (EDOR) Test, and suicide and suicide attempts with death intent in patients with a primary diagnosis of depression. Electrodermal hyporeactivity has in several publications from different laboratories repeatedly been shown to have a high sensitivity (up to 97%) and high raw specificity (up to 98%) for suicide. Such levels are unique in psychiatry. The relationship between suicidal propensity and hyporeactivity can be considered as strongly significant. Almost all evidence in the topic up today has been established in research settings with specific exclusion criteria for some secondary psychiatric and some somatic illnesses. However, it is important to study the relationship between electrodermal hyporeactivity and suicide in relatively unselected patients regarding secondary psychiatric diagnoses and somatic diagnoses in a natural clinical ward situation and milieu. A previous naturalistic study proved that a test of electrodermal hyporeactivity fits very well into the daily clinical work.
Behavioral problems are part of many of the chronic diseases that cause the majority of illness, disability and death. Tobacco, diet, physical inactivity, alcohol, drug abuse, failure to take treatment, sleep problems, anxiety, depression, and stress are major issues, especially when chronic medical problems such as heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, or kidney disease are also present. These behavioral problems can often be helped, but the current health care system doesn't do a good job of getting the right care to these patients. Behavioral health includes mental health care, substance abuse care, health behavior change, and attention to family and other psychological and social factors. Many people with behavioral health needs present to primary care and may be referred to mental health or substance abuse specialists, but this method is often unacceptable to patients. Two newer ways have been proposed for helping these patients. In co-location, a behavioral health clinician (such as a Psychologist or Social Worker) is located in or near the primary practice to increase the chance that the patient will make it to treatment. In Integrated Behavioral Health (IBH), a Behavioral Health Clinician is specially trained to work closely with the medical provider as a full member of the primary treatment team. The research question is: Does increased integration of evidence-supported behavioral health and primary care services, compared to simple co-location of providers, improve outcomes? The key decision affected by the research is at the practice level: whether and how to use behavioral health services. The investigators plan to do a randomized, parallel group clustered study of 3,000 subjects in 40 practices with co-located behavioral health services. Practices randomized to the active intervention will convert to IBH using a practice improvement method that has helped in other settings. The investigators will measure the health status of patients in each practice before and after they start using IBH. The investigators will compare the change in those outcomes to health status changes of patients in practices who have not yet started using IBH. The investigators plan to study adults who have both medical and behavioral problems, and get their care in Family Medicine clinics, General Internal Medicine practices, and Community Health Centers.
Suicidal behavior (SB) is a public health problem. The clinical model currently admitted to the understanding of SB is a stress vulnerability model, but so far, all scientific works has no clinical application. The management of psychiatric patients, including depressed subjects, faces the inability to detect those with a high risk of SB. Many studies have shown a link between low cholesterol and SB. A study has recently proposed a total cholesterol threshold below which the risk of suicide could be increased. However, a prospective study is needed to assess the predictive nature of such an indicator.
This is a closed-loop system which is embodied in a novel and intelligent algorithm that takes into account patients' vital signs. The system allows better and responsive titration of personalized pain relief together with non-invasive physiological monitoring that measures oxygenation, breathing and heart rate continuously.
Racial and socioeconomic disparities in physical and mental health problems are large, persistent, and severe; begin during childhood; and stem from in part damage to physiologic stress response systems caused by chronic stress. Discovery of ways to prevent and/or halt this progression of damage to a child's stress response system may offer new directions for combatting health disparities. This project will evaluate the efficacy of a new prevention program designed to teach preadolescent children effective ways for coping with chronic stress that will have direct effects on their physiologic stress response systems (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis) and ultimately prevent onset of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress symptoms and disorders.
The study is an investigation to assess the capacity of ascending doses of CX1739 to antagonize the respiratory depressive effect of remifentanil. The study will also investigate whether ascending doses of CX1739 reduce the analgesic effect of remifentanil or alter the BIS measure of sedation and will evaluate the safety of CX1739 when used in conjunction with remifentanil.
Integrating mental health treatments into the primary care delivered at Community Based Outpatient Clinics(CBOCs) that are geographically accessible to rural Veterans is a major priority for the Department of Veterans Affairs. However, there is no scientific evidence that integrating mental health and primary care is clinically effective at smaller CBOCs that have limited mental health staffing. The goal of this proposed project is to implement a "blended" combination of integrated care models that have been adapted for smaller CBOCs using telemedicine technologies, and evaluate the acceptability and effectiveness of the blended, telemedicine-based, integrated care model. If clinical outcomes are improved compared to usual care, findings will be used to justify and facilitate the implementation of this telemedicine-based integrated care model at smaller CBOCs in order to increase rural Veterans' access to effective mental health treatments.