Treatment
If left untreated, a typical major depressive episode may last for about six months, while about 20% of these episodes can last two years or more, with 50% of depressive episodes ending spontaneously. However, even after the major depressive episode is over, 20% to 30% of patients have residual symptoms, which can be distressing and associated with disability.
Regarding the treatment of major depressive episodes of severe intensity (multiple symptoms, minimal mood reactivity, severe functional impairment), combined psychotherapy plus antidepressant medications are more effective than psychotherapy alone.
Read more about this topic: Major Depressive Episode
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“The motion picture made in Hollywood, if it is to create art at all, must do so within such strangling limitations of subject and treatment that it is a blind wonder it ever achieves any distinction beyond the purely mechanical slickness of a glass and chromium bathroom.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“A regular council was held with the Indians, who had come in on their ponies, and speeches were made on both sides through an interpreter, quite in the described mode,—the Indians, as usual, having the advantage in point of truth and earnestness, and therefore of eloquence. The most prominent chief was named Little Crow. They were quite dissatisfied with the white man’s treatment of them, and probably have reason to be so.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)