Antidepressant prescription for youths has recently been on the increase. There is a growing concern over the increasing off-label usage of antidepressants. Current data on off-label antidepressant usage vary across countries and healthcare systems. Therefore, we examined the extent and pattern of antidepressant prescription for Korean children and adolescents using population-based data. Our d...

Sexual dysfunction (SD) is a common and disconcerting side effect of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) that often influences a patient’s desire to continue long-term antidepressant treatment. Studies specifically assessing changes in sexual wellbeing over time illustrate that the incidence of sexual side effects from SSRIs ranges from 20% to 70%, depending on the characteristics o...

OBJECTIVE To examine trends in types of antidepressant medications prescribed in Australia between 1975 and 2002. DESIGN Sales data from the Australian pharmaceutical industry were used to examine trends in overall antidepressant prescribing and changes in the types of antidepressants prescribed between 1975 and 2002. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Antidepressant sales were expressed as defined dail...

Virtually all antidepressant agents increase the birth of granule neurons in the adult dentate gyrus in rodents, providing a key basis for the neurogenesis hypothesis of antidepressant action. The novel antidepressant ketamine, however, shows antidepressant activity in humans within hours, far too rapid for a mechanism involving neuronal birth. Ketamine could potentially act more rapidly by enh...

Persistent symptoms of depression suggest the involvement of stable molecular adaptations in brain, which may be reflected at the level of chromatin remodeling. We find that chronic social defeat stress in mice causes a transient decrease, followed by a persistent increase, in levels of acetylated histone H3 in the nucleus accumbens, an important limbic brain region. This persistent increase in...

INTRODUCTION The authors describe the medications for treatment-resistant depression (TRD) in phase II/III of clinical development in the EU and USA and provide an opinion on how current treatment can be improved in the near future. Areas covered: Sixty-two trials were identified in US and EU clinical trial registries that included six investigational compounds in recent phase III development a...

Purpose: In this study, we assumed that treating animals with an antidepressant agents or voluntary running wheel exercise (RW) during adolescence may have protective effects against early life stress (ELS) which can impact on behavior and mitochondrial function. Evidence indicates that ELS has deleterious effects on brain and behavior and increases the risk of mental disorders such as depressi...

Early reports of the discovery of antidepressants in the 1950s have remained as little-known findings. Had the discovery of isoniazid, an agent with no clear action on monoamine systems, and that of reserpine, which depletes monoamines, been more widely known, then the monoamine lesion theories of depression, as proposed by Schildkraut in 1965, may not have been written. If the lesion in depres...

Following a review of the clinical trials of reboxetine, a new nonadrenegic reuptake inhibitor antidepressant, this paper presents a heuristic theoretical framework to better understand selective antidepressant action. For over three decades, the dominant views of antidepressant action have seen these agents active across all constitutional types and regardless of social setting. An increasing ...

The frontal cortex (FCX) plays a key role in processes that control mood, cognition and motor behaviour, functions which are compromised in depression, schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. In this regard, there is considerable evidence that a perturbation of monoaminergic input to the FCX is involved in the pathogenesis of these states. Correspondingly, the modulation of monoaminergic...