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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The antidepressant, Prozac, may help to curb disease activity in a particular form of multiple sclerosis (MS), new research indicates.
A team of researchers followed the progress of 40 patients with the relapsing remitting form of MS.
MS is a condition which affects the brain and spinal cord. It is characterised by a slowly progressing disablement. According [...]

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There’s major news on the antidepressant front, but it comes in an odd form: research on treating “lazy eyes” in rats. A study suggests that, yes, Prozac and similar medicines really do make the brain more flexible.
The report, titled “The Antidepressant Fluoxetine Restores Plasticity in the Adult Visual Cortex,” appears in the current issue of [...]

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The New York Times science section today features an essay on the long-term use of antidepressants. The lead refers to the sort of question I introduced in Listening to Prozac: how do these medications shape identity? But most of the piece concerns the biological effects of taking the drugs for years.
The author, Richard A. Friedman, [...]

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Over time, how deadly is the combination of depression and heart attacks? A recent study that received attention in the media found no connection, in the long term, between depression and death in heart attack victims. But that study was followed almost immediately by another that found the combination of heart attack and depression to [...]

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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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