Memantine as an augmentation therapy in obsessive–Compulsive disorder

Abstract

Obsessive Compulsive Disorders a mental illness, which is long lasting and the person has recurrent thoughts or mental images and compulsive acts, which the person is unable to resist. SSRI and TCA are primarily used drugs for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), but in few patients these lead to less response and some other augmenting drugs have to be added along with them. A role for glutamatergic dysfunction in the pathophysiology of OCD has been found. We report 2 cases with a diagnosis of OCD where the patients did not show good response on YBOCS with SSRI and other adjunctive drugs like venlafaxine, resperidone in adequate dose and duration. When memantine was added (20 mg) the patient showed improvement on YBOCS where score reduced within the 6 weeks of augmentation.

Keywords

• memantine
• ocd
• residual symptoms
• ybocs