Treatment Resistant Depression (TRD) is a term used to describe people who continue to experience symptoms of depression even though they are currently being treated with antidepressant medication.

The TRD clinic is able to assess, and in some cases, manage the treatment of adults (over 18 years of age) with “treatment resistant depression” who are willing to consider being involved in research studies. Please note that the TRD clinic is not able to provide immediate or emergency mental health support. Visit the “sources of immediate help” page for urgent support.

Individuals can refer themselves to the clinic directly, by contacting the team via the below options:

• By email: oxfordhealth.trdclinic@nhs.net
• By telephone: 01865 902135

You do not need a referral letter from your doctor. However, if you are currently receiving specialist treatment from a psychiatrist or other mental health professional for your low mood, we will need to contact your treating clinician before seeing you.

If you contact the clinic and it looks as though what we can offer might suit you, we will arrange for you to speak to a research assistant at a time that is convenient for you. The purpose of this telephone call is to check whether the clinic is likely to be able to help you and we will hopefully also be able to answer any questions you have about the clinic.

If, after this call, it seems likely that the clinic will be able to help you, we will arrange a time for you to have an assessment with one of the doctors in the clinic who are experts in the treatment od depression. This can either be done by visiting the clinic in person, or by telephone call.

The assessment takes about 1.5 hours. The purpose of this assessment is for the doctor to understand the difficulties you are experiencing, to discuss with you the possible treatments we have available and whether you would be interested in participating in any of the research studies we are running.

After this assessment, we will send a letter to both you and your GP which will include recommendations we have about your treatment. If you are enrolled into a research study at this point then we will be able to continue seeing you. If you are not enrolled into a study, we will not be able to continue seeing you, although with your permission, we can contact you in the future if a study that might be helpful to you begins.

Our clinic is paid for by ongoing research studies, not by the NHS. This means that we can only see people who are willing to consider being involved in research. It may be that when you hear about the studies, you would prefer not to be involved or that the studies we are running at the moment wouldn’t suit you; this is, of course, perfectly all right.