0000000000557500
AUTHOR
M. Fickinger
Psychotropic Drugs in the Management of Chronic Pain Syndromes
Psychotropic drugs have been integrated into the management of chronic pain syndromes for more than 30 years. Numerous open and controlled studies have taken place evaluating especially the antinociceptive efficacy of antidepressive drugs. This survey comprises the results of clinical reports, open clinical studies, placebo-controlled studies, and comparative studies of different substances. It will be shown that antidepressants are by far the best evaluated psychopharmacological substances, showing superiority against placebo in 70% of a total of 67 placebo-controlled studies. The synopsis of controlled comparison studies of different antidepressants tends to demonstrate a superiority of c…
Depression in the community: a comparison of treated and non-treated cases in two non-referred samples.
Family studies in non-patient samples may help to clarify whether or not treatment-seeking behaviour is substantially determined by clinical features of depression. Life-time risks of depression were investigated by structured clinical interviews (SADS-LA) in both a high-risk sample of depressed patients' first-degree relatives and an unscreened control sample of the general population: 34.6% of the high-risk sample versus 23.1% of controls were cases of depression, with a female preponderance in both groups. The rates of treated depression were 17.0% versus 8.5%. Female sex, greater age, higher severity of episodes, manic or hypomanic episodes recurrent course, and introverted and anancast…