general population surveys often report that only a small proportion of individuals with common mental disorders seek mental health treatment, suggesting a high level of unmet need for mental health care in the community. in recent years, however, the number of adults in industrialized countries who are treated with antidepressant medications has dramatically increased. this paper reviews the p...

Antidepressant medications have eased the suffering of millions of people. In addition to treating depression, antidepressant drugs also treat several anxiety disorders. Unfortunately, there are problematic limitations with antidepressant agents, including a delayed therapeutic response and insufficient efficacy. Emerging evidence shows that atypical antipsychotic agents can be used as augmenta...

OBJECTIVE This study aimed to investigate antidepressant prescribing patterns, including initial choice, switching and combining, and concomitant use of non-antidepressant agents, for depressive disorders in naturalistic clinical care settings in Korea. METHODS Patients with depressive disorder were recruited from both outpatient and inpatient settings in 18 hospitals from all over Korea. Tre...

Antiinflammatory drugs achieve their therapeutic actions at least in part by regulation of cytokine formation. A "cytokine hypothesis" of depression is supported by the observation that depressed individuals have elevated plasma levels of certain cytokines compared with healthy controls. Here we investigated a possible interaction between antidepressant agents and antiinflammatory agents on ant...

Mood disorders are common and debilitating, resulting in a significant public health burden. Current treatments are only partly effective and patients who have failed to respond to trials of existing antidepressant agents (eg, those who suffer from treatment-resistant depression [TRD]) require innovative therapeutics with novel mechanisms of action. Although neuroscience research has elucidated...

Substance P (neurokinin-1 [NK1]) receptor antagonists appear to be effective antidepressant and anxiolytic agents, as indicated in 3 double-blind clinical trials. In laboratory animals, they promptly attenuate the responsiveness of serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine [5-HT]) and norepinephrine (NE) neurons to agonists of their cell-body autoreceptors, as is the case for some antidepressant drugs tha...

BACKGROUND Ketamine has been reported to exert rapid and sustained antidepressant effects in patients with depression, including patients with treatment-resistant depression. However, ketamine has several drawbacks such as psychotomimetic/dissociative symptoms, abuse potential and neurotoxicity, all of which prevent its routine use in daily clinical practice. METHODS Therefore, development of...

INTRODUCTION The goal of the present work was to examine how clinicians' perceptions of the properties of antidepressants may influence their choice of antidepressants when treating major depressive disorder (MDD). METHODS 273 of 682 (40%) clinicians attending a psychopharmacology review course responded to a questionnaire designed to explore their practices and perceptions with regards to an...

BACKGROUND The safety and tolerability of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and the newer atypical agents have led to a significant increase in antidepressant use. These changes raise concern as to the likelihood of a corresponding increase in adverse behavioral reactions attributable to these drugs. METHOD All admissions to a university-based general hospital psychiatric unit durin...