Michael Thase, MD: New Medications for Treatment-Resistant Depression

Treatment-resistant depression remains 1 of the biggest challenges in psychiatry, but help could be on the way.

In recent years, investigators and drug developers have paid particular attention to this patient group and have focused on new classes of treatments like psychedelics.

Drugs like psilocybin are some of the more promising treatments that have emerged in a long time.

In a presentation during the 2022 Annual Psychiatric Times™ World CME Conference in San Diego on August 12, Michael Thase, MD, professor of psychiatry, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, spoke about some of the new and developing treatments for treatment-resistant depression.

In an interview with HCPLive®, Thase gave an overview on all the promising treatments in the pipeline for treatment-resistant depression.

“The field changed with the discovery of esketamine and its anti-depressant effects,” Thase said. “That’s the trailblazing drug from an approval standpoint. The exciting thing for us is it is a novel mechanism of action and when it works, it works relatively quickly.”

While eskeatmine is promising, it still only works for up to 30% of patients, still leaving a gap in care. However, existing treatments may only be effective in 10% of the population.