Treatment of geriatric depression with trazodone, imipramine, and placebo: a double-blind study.

Sixty unipolar depressed geriatric outpatients were subjects in a double-blind study of a new antidepressant, trazodone, versus imipramine and placebo. Over the four week study, patients in the two active medication groups improved significantly compared to placebo on both observer and self-ratings. Although imipramine and trazodone had similar therapeutic efficacy, trazodone was judged to have fewer side effects than imipramine, suggesting that trazodone may have particular clinical utility in the geriatric population which is especially vulnerable to cardiovascular and anticholinergic side effects.