Vita (UniBs): ‘Depression treatment must be quick and adequate’

“Losses, disappointments and separations can give rise to moments of depression, but these are physiological and normal episodes. However, if these or other situations trigger a series of symptoms, even serious, that persist over time and have a violent impact on quality of the person’s life, then we are facing major depression. ”This was explained by Antonio Vita, professor of psychiatry at the University of Brescia, director of the Brescia mental health department and vice president of the Italian Society of Psychiatry (Sip), on the sidelines of the conference organized by Janssen, a pharmaceutical company of the Johnson & Johnson Group, for the presentation of esketamine, an innovative drug for the treatment of major depression resistant to common therapies. Vita continued explaining that “major depressive disorder is characterized by a wide range of psycho-physical symptoms: from the loss of interest in all or almost all of the a habitual activities to loss of appetite and alteration of sleep, from tiredness to social isolation, from difficulty concentrating to a sense of constant inadequacy up to self-damaging ideas “. The specialist then recalled the data relating to the incidence of depression in the Italian population: “Our country has about 3 million cases of depression. Of these, more than half suffer from drug-resistant major depression, to treat which esketamine is It has been specially formulated. Fortunately, however, this disease, if recognized promptly and treated appropriately, can be completely overcome. Today, in fact, we have really very effective therapies, which allow a complete overcoming of this disorder “.