Medications to relieve symptoms of depression are called antidepressants. They work by altering levels of certain neurotransmitters such as serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine in the brain. A neurotransmitter is a brain chemical that enables messages to pass from nerve cell to nerve cell in the central nervous system. Many people with depression have low levels [...]

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Evidence indicates that all of the available antidepressants on the market have a high efficacy rate. The only area where the drugs do differ, is in the side effects they create. Side effects have become a central consideration in the new approach to depression treatment.
Years ago, Prozac launched a revolution. It rendered depression a disorder [...]

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The major classes of antidepressant medication are the selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs), the tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs), the monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), and the atypical antidepressants.
SSRI medications affect levels of serotonin in the brain. For many people, these medications are the first choice. Examples of these medications are listed here. The generic name is first, [...]

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As I mentioned above, I have personal experience with Prozac (generic name is Fluoxetine). Basically, Prozac is just another antidepressant. There are three reasons why it has become a household word. One is that it is one of a family of antidepressants (SSRIs) which have more moderate side-effects than the older antidepressants. Many patients are [...]

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Antidepressants are far less effective than doctors and the public may have been led to believe, a new study has claimed.
Eighty – eight per cent of clinical trials that showed the drugs were less than effective either were not published in medical journals or were presented as positive findings, according to the study in the [...]

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Do antidepressants work? They do. New evidence comes from a study of children and adolescents, patients in age groups where the efficacy of antidepressants has been hard to demonstrate. It’s just the sort of research that critics of drug trials ought to find convincing.
Antidepressants seem to do less good in the young. For decades, there [...]

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Antidepressants may be associated with an increased risk of suicidal behaviour, particularly in the early stages of treatment, the results of three new studies indicate.
The studies, which looked at SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) – the most commonly prescribed class of antidepressant – as well as tricyclic antidepressants, are published in the latest edition of [...]

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A new study has indicated that new generation antidepressants only benefit the most severely depressed people.
According to the findings, these drugs ‘do not produce clinically significant improvements in depression in patients who initially have moderate or even severe depression’.
As part of the study, a team from the University of Hull in the UK analysed data [...]

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