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Considering Antidepressants

Depression is the most common form of mental health disorder going, affecting literally millions of people. In the United States alone for instance, twenty percent of people or so are depressed. Unfortunately, many people who are depressed never get any form of treatment for their depression at all. When a person does get help for depression, the help is often in the form of therapy or some type of pharmaceutical treatment. The pharmaceuticals used most often in the treatment of depression are referred to as, logically enough, antidepressants.

Antidepressants have been in use since the 1950's. The method for antidepressants is to alter the brain chemistry in some specific way, often to maintain levels of a particular chemical. The SSRI antidepressants for example are designed to keep levels of the brain chemical serotonin at certain levels, the thought being that reduced levels of serotonin lead to depression among other dysfunctions. SSRI is shorthand for Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor. The most well known of the SSRI's without question is Prozac.

Prozac became commercially available in Europe starting 1986 but work on the drug actually started in the 1970's. Contrary to what may be popular opinion, Prozac was not the first SSRI antidepressant but it was the most commercially successful of the initial SSRI's. This was certainly helped by the fact that the first SSRI antidepressant, zimelidine, was banned because it presented serious side effects. Before Prozac came along tricyclic antidepressants were most frequently prescribed for depression, and Prozac was marketed as a drug form dramatically different from the tricyclics.

The claims about Prozac in comparison to the tricyclic form of antidepressants were that Prozac was more specific in the way it functioned, and that it caused fewer side effects. Tricyclic antidepressants were known for having particular side effects, including increased heart rate, constipation, and sexual dysfunction. Though Prozac may have had fewer side effects than the tricyclics, Prozac was not an entirely clean drug when it came to carryover side effects: Prozac was also said to affect sexual functioning. The side effects from Prozac use however were generally thought to subside over time.

Whether Prozac was a miracle drug or not is certainly up for debate, but it did prove to be enormously profitable. Prozac was prescribed millions of times, literally, and prior to its patent expiring grossed billions of dollars. There are now a new generation of SSRI's on the market, and similar to Prozac they've proven to be widely prescribed and extremely popular. This may reinforce the belief among some that SSRI's are currently the most effective antidepressants in use.

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Zinn Jeremiah is an online writer. To get depression help, visit help depression or depression treatment.