Review Article

Antidepressant-Resistant Depression and Antidepressant-Associated Suicidal Behaviour: The Role of Underlying Bipolarity

Table 1

The role of underlying bipolarity in antidepressant-resistance and antidepressant-associated suicidality in patients with mood disorders.

The frequency of antidepressant-resistance is about double in bipolar (I + II) and bipolar spectrum disorder than in unipolar depression [46, 10]

Antidepressant monotherapy can worsen the cross-sectional picture and long-term course of bipolar (I + II) and bipolar spectrum disorder [7, 9, 10, 1315]

Early-onset major depressive episode is (pre)bipolar [1618, 30]

Children and adolescents with major depressive episode are less responsive to antidepressants than adults [20, 43]The rarely occurring antidepressant-associated suicidal behavior among depressed patients is relatively most frequent in children and adolescents [4347]