Response of Depressed Patients to Methylamphetamine

Abstract

In 1959, J. M. Roberts claimed that in 50 depressed women aged 40–60 years the response to the intravenous injection of 15 mg. methylamphetamine differentiated significantly between those diagnosed as ‘psychotic’ and those diagnosed as ‘neurotic’. Following the injection each patient was observed closely for two to three hours, and in the great majority one of two responses occurred. Either the patient experienced a ‘sustained period of general uplift of mood and a feeling of greater well-being'—the ‘normalization’ response; or the patient showed ‘an immediate, or almost immediate, intensification of symptoms, particularly a worsening of any agitation present, often together with a deepening of the depressive affect'—the ‘intensification’ response. In only two patients, both with neurotic depression, was it not possible to classify the response.