February 06, 2025
This lecture will focus on what we know currently on major depressive disorder, from its clinical manifestations to its epidemiology and risk factors. The heterogeneity of major depressive disorder will also be discussed, with a focus of several subtypes, including melancholic and atypical depression. A review of existing treatment options will be provided, followed by a discussion on the current limitations of existing pharmacological treatments. Finally, the lecture will review the new pharmacological therapies that have merged in the past few years and that reflect the discovery of novel molecular targets.
** REGISTRATION CLOSED **
Maurizio Fava, MDDr. Maurizio Fava is Chair of the Mass General Brigham AMC Psychiatry Department, executive director of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Clinical Trials Network and Institute (CTNI), and the Slater Family Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Fava is a world leader in the field of depression and clinical psychopharmacology. He has edited eight books and authored or co-authored more than 900 original articles published in medical journals with international circulation, articles which have been cited more than 115,000 times in the literature and with an h index greater than 165 on Google Scholar.
Dr. Fava obtained his medical degree from the University of Padova School of Medicine and completed residency training in endocrinology at the same university. He then moved to the United States and completed residency training in psychiatry at MGH. He founded and was director of the hospital’s Depression Clinical and Research Program from 1990 until 2014. Under Dr. Fava’s direction, the Depression Clinical and Research Program became one of the most highly regarded depression programs in the country, a model for academic programs that link, in a bi-directional fashion, clinical and research work. In 2007, he also founded and is now the executive director of the MGH Clinical Trials Network and Institute, the first academic CRO specialized in the coordination of multi-center clinical trials in psychiatry.
Dr. Fava has been successful in obtaining funding as principal or co-principal investigator from both the National Institutes of Health and other sources for a total of more than $150 million. Dr. Fava’s prominence in the field is reflected in his role as the co-principal investigator of STAR*D, the largest research study ever conducted in the area of depression, of the RAPID Network, the NIMH-funded series of studies of novel, rapidly-acting antidepressant therapies, and of the Clinical Coordinating Center of EPPIC-Net, the NINDS-funded network conducting proof-of-concept trials in pain. Dr. Fava is a well-known national and international lecturer, having given more than 300 presentations at national and international meetings. He is the former President of the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology and, in 2023, Dr. Fava was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.
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