My memory is fuzzy due to several reasons, depression being just one of them, but I'm pretty sure I was excited when I heard, a couple of years ago, about the STAR*D study being done by NIMH. This was going to be the end all, be all study, the mother and father of all studies done ever on depression.
Shouldn't have gotten my hopes up.
From what I can see, the best news to come out of this comprehensive study is that genetic variation is a factor in treatment resistant depression. Most of the articles indicate the results as sobering; I could tell you more about them but I stopped reading after the word 'sobering' which in most cases means I quit after the first sentence.
The O magazine issue that first clued me in to the study results (which, FYI, isn't up on their website yet) had the best punchline:
"No one in this field is satisfied with the status quo...we know we need better treatments but we still have to identify the brain patterns and genetic markers that will help us get there."
In other words, we still can't help you. Or, as someone said
"If there are many treatments for a disease, you can be sure there is no cure."
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