According to a new study conduced by a team of American researchers, it seems that parents of depressed teenagers should not lose hope if initial drug treatments fail to combat the issue. The study published on Tuesday showed that failure of the initial drug treatment against teenage depression is something common, as it happens in four out of 10 cases. However, sufferers and their parents should not lose hope, as the recent study showed that switching medicine and adding psychotherapy to the treatment might improve the initial situation.

"The findings should be encouraging for families with a teen who has been struggling with depression for some time," said Doctor David Brent of the University of Pittsburgh and the main author of the study, which was published on Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Doctor David Brent and his team conducted this study between 2000 and 2008. They used 334 patients with ages between 12 and 18 who suffered from major depression and who hadn’t previously responded to two months of treatment with a popular type of SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor).

However, the sufferers were variously switched to other SSRIs, such as Eli Lilly and Co.'s Prozac (fluoxetine), Forest Laboratories Inc.'s Celexa (citalopram) or GlaxoSmithKline Paxil (paroxetine); they were also given a different SSRI and cognitive behavioral therapy, emphasizing behavior and problem-solving change; or they were switched to Wyeth’s Effexor (venlafaxine), which is a SNRI (serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor). Another variant was switching to Effexor and therapy.

According to the research, about 55 percent of sufferers who switched to either type of medication and added therapy responded, while 41 percent of those who switched only to another medication, without adding therapy, also got better.

"About 40 percent of adolescents with depression do not adequately respond to a first treatment course with an antidepressant medication, and clinicians have no solid guidelines on how to choose subsequent treatments for these patients," said Doctor Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, that institution that paid for the study.