Efficacy of treatment is the stand out point of this article.
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is quite common and can be very disabling if not treated properly. However, fewer than 40% of patients achieve remission with their initial treatment. In the case of ineffective therapy, those patients often then experience months of trials using various different selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), or they move on to other psychotherapists, or they drop out of treatment attempts altogether, which can be disastrous. Therefore, it would be of great importance if an objective, quantitative test were available to guide the patient towards the optimal treatment direction at the outset. Helen Mayberg and colleagues at Emory University in Atlanta have recently published an important step forward in this direction. They measured brain glucose metabolism by PET (positron emission tomography) imaging in a series of MDD patients before any form of treatment was started. They then randomly assigned the patients to either of two  groups: treatment…
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