Do Anti-Depressants Help with Depression?

Antidepressants, when combined with psychotherapy, are beneficial aids for treating seriously depressed people. Depression has been defined as a serious mental illness involving deep feelings of sadness and despair, lasting for weeks, even months, causing difficulty in thinking, producing physical symptoms and profoundly disrupting life, activities and relationships. It has been called the Westerns countries' second most disabling ailment.

There are different causes of depression. It can arise from prolonged substance abuse or following a specific event such as the death of a loved one, a heart attack or diagnosis of a terminal illness. But perhaps the most interesting is the fact that depression runs in families and is often times inherited. It has been accepted that depression is caused by an imbalance of neurotransmitters, or brain chemicals, that regulate mood. The chemicals affected are serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine.

There are two main treatments for depression. One is psychotherapy, a psychological technique designed to encourage understanding of problems and modify troubling feelings, behaviors or relationships. In contrast to psychotherapy, biomedical therapy, most commonly in the form of antidepressants, has become the popular treatment for depression. Among the newer medications, options range from SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft, to those - Wellbutrin and Effexor, for example - that target different or combined neurotransmitters.

These drugs have become the punch line of a great deal of jokes in society. Contrary to popular belief, the primary function of these antidepressants is not to transform a seriously depressed person into someone with no worries and to make them more outgoing, productive or self-confident, but to help alleviate symptoms of depression so that an individual can regain a normal level of functioning.

Like most medications used to treat an illness, antidepressants have side affects such as headaches, nervousness, difficulty sleeping, loss of appetite and sexual dysfunction. Despite these effects, the overall effectiveness of these antidepressants has made them quite popular. Twenty million people worldwide take Prozac - six million in the United States alone. A study of 161 outpatients, recently reported to the Journal of the American Medical Association, demonstrated that long-term treatment with Zoloft prevents recurrence of chronic severe depression.

It has been of concern however that antidepressants can turn people into violent offenders. In Wyoming, a man taking an antidepressant shot his wife, daughter, granddaughter and himself. It was believed that the antidepressant caused him to commit this act. Later it was determined that the man was actually suffering from bipolar disorder, not depression, and was prescribed the wrong medication. After this incident, a researcher from the United Kingdom produced evidence that as many as a quarter of individuals who are not depressed, but take SSRIs become agitated and violent. According to Dr. Peter Kramer, M.D. and author of Listening to Prozac, people who suffer from bipolar disorder and are misdiagnosed with depression and prescribed antidepressants, often get worse. It is important to be completely honest with your psychiatrist and let them know if you suffer from episodes of mania as well as episodes of depression.

Concern has also been expressed about the decline of psychotherapy as a means for treating depression, which has been shown to be effective. A recent meg-analysis of 595 patients with major depression concluded that the best treatment plan involves a combination of psychotherapy and drug therapy. Dr. Kramer states, "Psychotherapy can settle down disorders and give people tools for avoiding of living with depression. Par of our environment, part of our stress, part of our sense of security is based on interpersonal relations, learning and all the things that psychotherapy influences."

If taken as directed, and used in conjunction with psychotherapy, antidepressants are a beneficial aid in the treatment of depression. Although there are negative side effects, the good has proven to outweigh the bad. But should Prozac or any other psychoactive drug be used to enhance normal personality and psychological functioning? As Tracy Thompson, a sufferer of depression says, "Drugs are tools, nothing more - but that is no small thing. To a person scaling a cliff, a grappling hook is the difference between life and death."