Antidepressants not working for so many?
Why antidepressants don’t work for so many
October 25, 2009
Why have these antidepressants not been working? According to new research from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, antidepressants have not been working for so many people because the cause of depression has been oversimplified and the drugs to treat it are aimed at the wrong target. A long time depression researcher Eva Redei appears to topple two strongly held beliefs about depression. One belief is that the stressful life events are a major cause of depression. The other is that there is an unbalance in neurotransmitters in the brain which triggers depression symptoms. These beliefs were the basis of developing drugs used to treat depression.
Redei,the David Lawrence Stein Professor of Psychiatry at Northwestern’s Feinberg School, found powerful molecular evidence that squashes the long-held belief that stress is the main cause of depression. Redei’s new research shows that there is no overlap between stress-related genes and depression-related genes. “This is a huge study and statistically powerful,” Redei said. “This research opens up new routes to develop new antidepressants that may be more effective. There hasn’t been an antidepressant based on a novel concept in 20 years.”
Current antidepressants are not working so well because the antidepressants used on the animals that have manipulated behavior to be depressed by stress are treating the stress, not the depression.Redei found strong indications that depression begins further up the chain of events in the brain. The biochemical events that ultimately result in depression actually start in the development and functioning of neurons. “The medications have been focused on the effect, not the cause,” Redei said. “That is why the medicaion takes so long to work and are not effective for so many people.
What do you think researchers could do to find an antidepressant that works?
How would you find a new antidepressant?
One Response to “Antidepressants not working for so many?”
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This is a drag for alot of people. My dad has to take antidepressants and they dont necassarily work on him because they only target the stress instead of the depression, it makes me sad that he doesn’t do things that he used to do. I miss being able to do things with him, but his medication is making it worse then what he used to be.
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