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Comment by hn_throwaway_99

I think this research is great. I've often said (and I'm sure I heard it somewhere else first) "Depression is not a disease, it's a symptom". The treatment for depression is kind of "throw stuff against the wall and see what works", because while different treatments target different parts of the brain, if someone comes in with depression we often don't know what the underlying etiology of that depression is.

I suffer(ed) from chronic depression, and I'd get "bouts" of severe episodes every 5-6 years or so. I was very fortunate in that ketamine infusion therapy was a complete and amazing godsend for me - it was like it fixed a switch in my head. But I know other people with chronic depression that did ketamine therapy that got no benefit (but at least in one case they did get a lot of benefit from a different treatment, TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation). My point is that basically everyone in the field of psychiatry knows that some interventions work great for some people while having no effect on others. More research like this should allow us to better target treatments.

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