Doctor explains: What is Major Depressive Disorder?

Doctor explains: What is Major Depressive Disorder?

Mental health is top of mind for many people across the country, and today I’m here with Doctor JS Kamath, the director of psychiatry clinical trials and research programs at UConn Health. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. And this is definitely a topic that a lot of people have been shedding light on us recently, its impact on folks. Can you explain what MDD is and maybe how that differs from a, uh, regular depressive episode? Sure. So when, you know, um, if something bad happens in your life, um, you’re bound to get sad and, you know, sometimes you just get sad for no reason, thinking about the past. MDD is, is, it’s quite different in the sense that it’s a profound feeling of sadness that just simply doesn’t go away even if something good happens in your life like I had a patient who was telling me that she was with her kids and her family on July 4th and she just didn’t get the pleasure. She didn’t want to be there and that’s really disturbing for people. Uh, they then stop doing things. They don’t get the pleasure, they lose interest in doing things that they used to do. It starts disrupting their sleep. They feel tired, they can’t concentrate as you can imagine, that’s all of this is going to affect your life. You’re less productive at work. You’re not available at home. She was telling me that she was getting mad at her kids for no reason, um, and, and she was feeling it afterwards and that leads to feelings of guilt feelings of, you know, I’m not a good mom and feelings of failure and in the worst case scenarios, of course you have thoughts of giving up thoughts of suicide so it’s, it’s quite different it just simply doesn’t go away. And with uh regular I don’t know if it’s if I should say regular but regular depressive episodes that’s something that people may be able to work through, but with MDG it’s more difficult. Yes, yes, I think it it’s just not under your control. You’re absolutely right. I think people can, you know, feel sad and. When they’re not in a depressive episode, major depressive episode, they are able to move on and say, you know what, you know I have kids and I’m going to enjoy my kids and I have a lot to live for and that feeling just goes away. So what treatment options are available? So we have a number of treatment options that are currently available on the market. There are, we call it, um, 3 major classes of medications and of course psychotherapy and, um, you know, um, there are certain kinds of medications that belong to each class. They are called serotonin medications, serotonin norepinephrine medications. These are based on the chemistry that they target in the brain and of course there is a combination of treatments. The problem is, um, about, you know, let’s say about 21 million people in the past year in the United States experienced at least one major depressive episode, and about 1/3 of those patients don’t respond to what’s available on the market. Um, they’ve tried all these classes, they’ve tried combination of classes, they have tried psychotherapy. And it’s really difficult for them because they’re kind of living their life without that pleasure, you know, yeah, and that takes a toll. It takes a toll. So what is UCon Health doing to combat this? So we offer our regular services, but um we also have clinical trials. Um, for these 1/3 of patients, um, out of 21 million as I mentioned, we really need new treatments. We need new novel concepts and fortunately we are in an exciting era in psychiatry and with with novel medications that hopefully will make a huge difference in the near future, so we have. You know, medications that are much more specific and there are completely novel mechanisms, novel targets than what’s currently available on the market and that’s important because you know for example we have this clinical trial that specifically targets potassium channel on nerve cells and what that does it. Stabilizes your brain from the overactive brain that’s related to depression. OK, so things are looking up as far as those clinical trials. Yeah, and you know if you wanna call us or there’s a website, it’s NDDclinicalstudy.com. Or you can call our team my coordinators, they are at 860-679-6739. That’s one of the numbers, but you can look up UConn Health psychiatry clinical trials and should be able to find us. Well, thank you so much for joining us, and I hope that the trials continue to work well so people who need them can get the help that they need. Yeah, hopefully it will make a difference. Thank you for having me. Thank you.

Dr. Jayesh Kamath, psychiatrist with UConn Health, explains what Major Depressive Disorder and how it can impact patients.