Abstract
Antidepressants are drugs which are effective for treating depression, a serious psychiatric disorder that afflicts about 5% of the adult population in the United States. These drugs, which are also less commonly called psychoanaleptics, thymoleptics, or mood-elevating drugs, are represented by a diverse group of chemical structures (see Fig. 1) whose mechanism of therapeutic action is currently unknown. However, there are many hypotheses about how they work, and in general, these theories involve biogenic amine neurotransmitters, especially norepinephrine and serotonin.
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Further reading
Enna SJ, Malick JB, Richelson E, eds (1981): Antidepressants: Neurochemicals, Behavioral and Clinical Perspectives. New York: Raven Press
Richelson E (1982): Pharmacology of antidepressants in use in the United States. J Clin Psychiatry 43(11) Sec 2: 4
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Richelson, E. (1989). Antidepressants. In: Abnormal States of Brain and Mind. Readings from the Encyclopedia of Neuroscience . Birkhäuser, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6768-8_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6768-8_7
Publisher Name: Birkhäuser, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4899-6770-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-6768-8
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