You believe you may suffer from major depression and you think you would like to take part in a clinical trial. What are the steps you go through?   1. First you contact us either by phone, snail mail or email. We will call you back and get your basic demographics like name, phone number, where you heard about us and so forth.   2. Then you will receive a telephone-screening interview. In this conversation you will answer a diverse set of questions to determine if you are suitable for the study. For example, if you are a woman and intend to become pregnant, you wouldn’t qualify. If you drink alcohol on a regular basis and you would not want to give up drinking alcohol, you wouldn’t qualify. If you are under 18 or over 65 you wouldn’t qualify. You will also be asked some questions about your current symptoms. Then if it appears you don’t have any reason to be excluded from the study and you may well be suffering from major depression, you will be scheduled for a screening visit.   3. The screening visit can take two hours or more. First of all, you will be given detailed information about the study and you will read (very carefully) the informed consent form. We will go over that form with you in detail to make sure each and every question is answered completely and to your satisfaction. At this visit you will be interviewed in detail to make sure the diagnosis of major depression is present and that you are not suffering from other co-existing mental or physical disorders which might exclude you from the study. The level of your depression will be carefully examined so a quantitative number can be assigned to document the severity. You will receive a physical examination by a physician, a series of laboratory studies and EKG. These various examinations seek to determine whether your depression stems from an underlying undiagnosed medical condition.   4. About a week later you will come in for your baseline visit. At this visit all the information will be reviewed with you including your lab results, psychological testing results and EKG. Then you will come in for regularly scheduled appointments. Often these appointments can take as long as an hour or more. The timing of these appointments is very strict with only a small leeway of a couple of days. You may be contacted by phone in between times. During the course of the study, you may also receive additional laboratory tests and physical examinations depending on the trial you are in. You will continue this series of visits until you reach the end of the study, or the Biomedical Company terminates the study, or you decide you are experiencing intolerable side effects, or if you feel like you simply do not want to continue.   5. At that time you will have a termination visit where you will receive another physical examination and a series of laboratory tests and another EKG. You will be asked to return about a week later to go over all of the information to make sure everything has been followed up completely.   6. Then Dr. Feiger may see you for up to four months at no charge and may provide you with one month of medication free of charge. If necessary, after that period of time you will be referred to another mental health professional for ongoing care. We will assist you with that referral.   It all starts with you contacting us by   phone: 303-425-HOPE (4673) or email: info@feigerresearch.com.   We respond to all calls promptly!