What is a clinical trial?

Clinical trials are designed to test the safety and effectiveness of potential new treatments, to see if they can be made available to the public.

They are designed to help answer important questions about investigational medicines, such as:

• How does this medicine work?
• How will it affect certain conditions, diseases, or disorders?
• Is this medicine safe and well-tolerated at various doses?

People who take part in clinical trials are vital to the process of improving medical care.

Why join a clinical trial?

Thousands of volunteers all around the world take part in clinical trials every year, and they decide to do it for many different reasons. For every medicine on a pharmacy shelf, volunteers like you have taken part in clinical trials and the data collected has helped make that medicine available for people to take today.

Taking part in a clinical trial like APPROACH may help to improve our knowledge of major depressive disorder (MDD) and has the potential to improve the quality of life for people with MDD in the future.