Anxious depression, often resulting from childhood trauma, causes body changes which mean that standard depression treatments are often ineffective, according to new research presented at the ECNP in Barcelona.
Major depressive disorder (MDD) affects up to 20 percent of Europeans, and around half of these people have "anxious depression" (psychological anxiety like high levels of anxiety and nervousness, plus somatic anxiety, such as gastrointestinal symptoms); which is associated with greater severity, poorer outcomes, and higher possibility of suicide. Now scientists have concluded that the biochemistry of patients with MDD and anxious depression is different, and that patients with anxious depression need to be treated differently. In addition, patients with anxious depression who have undergone sexual abuse or neglect as a child have a tendency to have a changed biochemistry.
The team worked with 144 patients with MDD. A subgroup of 78 patients were identified as having anxious depression, and these patients showed a greater severity of symptoms, and a poorer response to treatment than patients with general MDD. They found that 30 percent of the patients with anxious depression had suffered sexual abuse as children (versus 16 percent with 'normal' depression, MDD), and 76 percent suffered from emotional neglect (versus 58 percent with 'normal' depression).
[For more on this study by European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, go to https://medicalxpress.com/news...ody-biochemical.html]
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