DEPRESSION DRUGS

Depression Drugs

Depression Drugs

Introduction

“Depression affects the way a person feels about himself, how he eats and sleeps, and how he thinks about things. Most people suffering from depression have overwhelming feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and helplessness. Suicide is a danger if you are depressed.”

Depressive disorders are the most common form of mental disorders both in the community and in health care settings. These disorders exist in several forms, including depressive episodes (major depression), recurrent depression (unipolar depression), bipolar disorder, and dysthymia. Unipolar depression is one of the more commonly encountered psychiatric disorders. Unlike normal emotional experiences of sadness, loss, or passing mood states, major depression is persistent and can significantly interfere with an individual's thoughts, behavior, mood, activity, and physical health. Major depression is the leading cause of disability in the U.S. and many other developed countries. These are four basic steps that should be taken to understand and get help for depression are:

Signs of depression should be detected.

Understanding that depression is a real illness.

Getting a checkup and showing what that person is feeling.

Getting treatment

Depression and Drugs

Depression is widespread in today's society and is called 'the common cold of mental health problems.' But despite its prevalence, people are wary about the use of a pill in order to chase the blues away. Some even liken anti-depressants to Soma as depicted in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Soma is the perfect pleasure drug that provides a mindless, inauthentic happiness, which makes people comfortable with their lack of freedom. Depression is often disregarded as a serious illness. Society, as a whole, stigmatizes depression and sees anti-depressants as a way out instead of a legitimate medicine. But the people that feel this way, often have not had any personal experience with this illness.

The physical basis of depression involves neurotransmitters in the brain. Neurotransmitters are chemicals that carry messages from one nerve cell to another. Nerve cells do not touch. There are microscopic gaps between them called synapses. For a nerve impulse to travel from one nerve cell to another, the sending cell releases a tiny amount of one of the neurotransmitters, which transmits the signal to the second cell, and so on around the body. After a nerve impulse has been sent across a synapse, special enzymes clear away the neurotransmitter so that another impulse may be sent.

The first antidepressants, monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitors, were discovered accidentally during the 1960's by researchers who were trying to develop new drugs to treat tuberculosis. MAO inhibitors didn't help TB, but they elevated mood. Since then, many other types of antidepressants have been developed. They are all about equally effective. But the newer drugs are safer and for most people, have fewer side effects. In order of their development, here are today's antidepressants: MAO inhibitors, Tricyclic medications, Tetracyclic medications, Wellbutrin, Desyrel, Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI), Effexor, and Serzone.

The anti-depressant that is known by most people is Prozac. This anti-depressant falls under the grouping of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors as does Zoloft and ...