While perusing posters at a recent international psychiatry conference, a prominent subject
garnering intensive interest was the understanding and treatment of treatment-resistant
depression (TRD). The definition of TRD, however, was notably vague: ranging from 1 to as
many as 8 failed antidepressant treatment trials. This lack of a consensual TRD definition
creates enormous problems: it limits the ability to do comparative treatment research, to
understand the biological underpinnings of TRD, and produces ambiguous medical …