CURRENT TRENDS OF RESEARCH ON ANTIDEPRESSIVE TREATMENT AND PROPHYLAXIS

The goal has been to recognize, as unsolved problems, clinical difficulties and lack of knowledge, disadvantages and risks, shortcomings and limitations of antidepressant therapy and prophylaxis, and to formulate these as questions, and, thus, to define them as tasks for research. The following problems have been discussed: (1) The concepts of therapy and prophylaxis, particularly in relationship to each other, are not clear; (2) The generalization possibilities of research results gained from depressively ill patients in the hospital are limited to an unknown degree; (3) The classification system for depressions is insufficiently therapy oriented; (4) The conditions of therapy resistance of depressions are unknown to a great extent; (5) The reasons why depressions become chronic are likewise unknown to a great extent; (6) The combination of various antidepressant treatment procedures is done without rules, and (7) The effective latency of antidepressant medication is theoretically unclarified and practically and important disadvantage. © 1979.