How quickly will my patient be feeling better?

For antidepressants, it is generally claimed that 2–4 weeks treatment is necessary to experience improvement. In the clinical studies, statistically significant clinical improvement relative to placebo was demonstrated as early as one week in escitalopram-treated patients(ref.1), (ref.2), (ref.3) and (ref.4).

References:

1. Gorman et al, 2002

2. Lepola et al, 2003

3. Burke et al, 2002

4. Wade et al, 2002