Successful treatment of recurrent brief depression with reboxetine -- a single case analysis.

Recurrent Brief Depression (RBD) is a prevalent condition among the depressive illnesses, and is characterized by depressive episodes of a few days' duration occurring almost every month that are unrelated to the menstruation cycle. So far, RBD has not been shown to respond to antidepressive treatment in controlled clinical trials with citalopram, fluoxetine, flupenthixol, paroxetine, or mianserin using a "classical" parallel group design. However, successful RBD treatment on about sixty patients has so far been reported in one open trial with fluoxetine and in several cases with lithium, mirtazapine, and tranylcypromine. Furthermore, successful treatment of RBD has been reported in a few patients with carbamazepine, nimodipine, and verapamil in controlled double-blind single-case analyses using a flexible cross-over design.