Augmentation of Interpersonal Psychotherapy With High-Definition Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation for Adolescent Depression

Plain-language summary

Depression is among the most prevalent psychiatric disorders, with an upward trend in its manifestation in younger individuals. In contrast to adult depression, adolescent depression often presents with longer attack durations, higher recurrence rates, chronicity, and elevated disability rates. At present, treatment options for adolescent depression encompass pharmacological, physical, and psychological therapies. However, current evidence suggests that no antidepressant medication is entirely safe for youths, with only fluoxetine and escitalopram being FDA-approved for treating adolescent depression. Given the weight of interpersonal stressors faced by teenagers, the NICE guidelines recommend interpersonal therapy(IPT) as a first-line treatment. A 2020 meta-analysis in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry reported that interpersonal therapy exhibited significantly greater improvements in depression symptoms than cognitive behavioral therapy(CBT), although psychotherapeutic effects were modest, achieving a remission rate of 60%. These results underscore the need for further research to enhance interpersonal therapy's effectiveness in treating adolescent depression. High-Definition Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (HD-tDCS）is a highly secure non-invasive brain stimulation technique that produces sustained effects even after stimulation has discontinued, rendering it particularly valuable for therapeutic interventions. The proposed study aims to augment a single IPT treatment with HD-tDCS stimulation for adolescent depression. By enhancing the excitability of the cerebral cortex, HD-tDCS could potentially enhance IPT's therapeutic efficacy in treating adolescent depression while facilitating further investigation of its underlying neural circuit mechanisms.

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