The Psychiatric clinics of North America
-
Psychiatr. Clin. North Am. · Jun 1996
ReviewThe management of treatment-resistant depression in disorders on the interface of psychiatry and medicine. Fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, migraine, irritable bowel syndrome, atypical facial pain, and premenstrual dysphoric disorder.
We have reviewed studies examining the efficacy of various psychotropic medications, primarily antidepressant agents, in the treatment of a group of disorders that appear to exhibit some phenomenologic and genetic relationship to major depression. These disorders all appear to benefit (albeit to varying degrees) from antidepressant medications of several different chemical families. This observation has important theoretical and clinical implications. ⋯ From a clinical perspective, too, these results are important. They suggest that trials of antidepressant medications should be strongly considered in patients with these disorders. Furthermore, other types of psychotropic medication appear to have a role in the treatment of individual disorders, as discussed in the corresponding sections.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED)