Conditions: Depression
Keywords: Depression
Allocation: NA | Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Enrollment: 116
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
The purpose of this study is to look at the relationship between age related structural brain changes and changes in depressive symptoms,disability and several aspects of cognitive functioning following treatment with escitalopram.

Detailed description:
Age-related brain changes have been associated with development of late-life depression. Prominent among aging-related changes is decline in white matter disproportionately affecting frontal structures.Based on previous findings, we conceptualized treatment resistance, disability, and executive dysfunction as clinical phenomena contributed, at least in part, by compromised integrity of frontal neural systems. The study focuses on frontal white matter abnormalities in geriatric depression and their relationship to treatment response, disability,and executive dysfunction.

Arms:
arm 1: 12-week open label with 2 week placebo period (14 weeks total)

Interventions: intervention 1: Escitalopram
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: 10mg tab daily

Protocol document: