When mood and time align: nasal esketamine reduces lived time disturbances in treatment-resistant depression

These two cases highlight the utility of a focused, structured clinical phenomenological interview in measuring treatment effectiveness in subjective experience. Two male patients, aged 35 and 27, of Serbian ethnicity with treatment-resistant depression were treated with nasal esketamine, with clinical progress monitored using both the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) and the Transdiagnostic Assessment of Temporal Experience (TATE), a structured instrument assessing the patient's felt sense of time. Notably, TATE scores in the first case reached general population levels at week 4, one week prior to the treatment response, as indicated by MADRS. These findings underscore the value of phenomenological assessments in complementing traditional depression scales to capture nuanced improvements during treatment.