Finding who benefits from lithium for hard-to-treat depression

This research study is testing whether adding lithium to your current antidepressant medication can help if your depression hasn't gotten better with standard treatments alone. About 30% of people with depression don't respond well to their first antidepressant, and this study wants to understand who might benefit from adding lithium to their treatment plan. Researchers will carefully track your symptoms and collect biological samples to help predict who will respond best to this combination.

When depression doesn't improve after trying one or more antidepressants at the right dose, people need other options. Adding lithium to antidepressant therapy is recommended by German treatment guidelines, but doctors don't yet have good ways to predict which patients will benefit most. This study aims to find patterns that could help identify who will respond well to this medication combination.