DepRelapse - why does severe depression return shortly after successful treatment completion?
Depression is expected to become the leading cause of disability worldwide in 2030. A major cause of the high disability is the recurring nature of the disease. In this NFR FriPro project, lead by associate professor and consultant radiologist, Olga Therese Ousdal, we aim to understand why some patients experience an early return of severe depression after succesful neurostimulation treatments.
By: Olga Therese Ousdal
Published: (Updated: )
While the last decades have witnessed an increase in effective acute treatments for severe depression, one common limitation is that several of the patients experience a return of the depression (i.e. a relapse) within few months after treatment completion. Despite decades of research, clinicians are not able to predict which patients that will relapse, and we do not understand what drives this early return of the disease. In the DepRelapse project, funded by the Norwegian Research Concil, we will collect MRI of the brain, clinical, cognitive and serum proteomics data in remitted pateints with Major Depressive Disorder, to unravel the mechanisms of early depression relapse after successful neurostimulation treatments.
In this interdisciplinary project lead by associate professor and consultant radiologist Olga Therese Ousdal at Department of Biomedicine, UiB, we partner with Department of Radiology and Division of Psychiatry at Haukeland University Hospital and Stavanger University Hospital and the proteomics core faciity at UiO, to answer this important and timely research question.