Patients with chronic or recurrent major depressive disorder who have recovered while taking antidepressants would do best to stay on their medications, results of a clinical trial suggest.

Rates of recurrence over three years of follow-up were 48.5% in people who maintained antidepressant therapy, compared with 75.8% in those who were tapered off their medication, the US authors report in JAMA Psychiatry.

Participants had all taken part in an earlier phase of the trial and had recovered from chronic or recurrent major depressive disorder (MDD) either through antidepressant monotherapy (137 people) or using a combination of antidepressants and CBT (155 people).

To investigate whether staying on their medications would prevent relapse, patients in the two groups were re-randomised either to continue their antidepressants, or to tapered withdrawal.