"People think of treatment resistant depression as a niche illness, and it is so far from the truth." Roughly 1 in 5 Australians will have depression in their life, tablet antidepressants work for about half of them, and by the third failed tablet a patient is considered treatment resistant — "we're talking about millions and millions of Australians."
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Lauren walks through the funnel: first-line treatment is tablet antidepressants, which "work for about half of people who have depression." If the first one doesn't work, "the chances of the second one working are significantly diminished, and then by the time you're trying a third one, like it's not gonna work essentially."
The label itself is dated. "The idea of treatment resistance came around before we had other therapies — so before we had ECT and TMS, brain stimulation type therapies, these patients could not be treated, so they were treatment resistant. It's a hangover from a system that's not today's system." The scale is the point: "we're not talking about like a few people who have this weird disorder — we're talking about a huge group of Australians today who aren't getting the best care for them."