Comparison of alprazolam and imipramine for treatment of outpatient depression.

A 6-week double-blind comparison of the therapeutic efficacy of alprazolam and imipramine in 90 depressed psychiatric outpatients revealed a significantly superior response to alprazolam in the first 2 weeks of treatment as measured by total scores on the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression and the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale. Further analyses revealed that all significant differences could be accounted for by the superior effect of alprazolam on sleep disturbance. By the end of Weeks 4 and 6, no significant differences in therapeutic response between the two treatment groups were noted, with patients in both groups evidencing improvement on all measures. A differentially high dropout rate among patients in the imipramine treatment group posed a problem for interpretation of results in the latter weeks of treatment.