Prospective evaluation of specialist inpatient treatment for refractory affective disorders.

Background: Little data exist to inform the treatment of severe and resistant affective disorders. We report here the effectiveness of specialist multimodal inpatient treatment for refractory affective disorders.

Methods: Prospective evaluation of 225 consecutive patients admitted to the National Affective Disorders Unit between 2001 and 2008.

Depression 2: Exploring management options for adults with moderate to severe symptoms.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence recently updated its guideline on treating and managing depression in adults. The first part of this two part unit covered the identification, assessment and initial management of persistent subthreshold depressive symptoms and mild to moderate depression. This second part looks at the core treatments for moderate to severe depression, as well as mild to moderate depression and persistent subthreshold symptoms that have not responded to low intensity interventions.

Depression 1: identifying the condition and offering initial treatment for adults.

Nurses must ensure their practice remains up to date and that they are aware of changes in the evidence base for managing depression. This two part unit on the updated National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guideline on depression outlines some of the main areas that were updated and the implications for nursing practice.

A multidimensional tool to quantify treatment resistance in depression: the Maudsley staging method.

Objective: Treatment resistance is a common clinical phenomenon in depression. However, current unitary models of staging fail to represent its complexity. We aimed to devise a model to stage treatment-resistant depression, taking into account the core factors contributing to treatment failure.