ANTIDEPRESSANT DRUGS

Mental depression, like anxiety states, is a common psychiatric condition. If it is a more serious  condition, then it can disrupt the normal social life and may derive the individual to commit suicide. Antidepressant drugs are used to treat depressed persons. The common symptoms of mental depression are feeling of guilt, tension, anxiety, emotional withdrawal and in case of endogenous depression, motor retardation. In manic depression extreme swings in mood characterized by mood elation, hyperactivity, uncontrolled thought and speech followed by severe depression and suicidal tendencies are observed.




The drugs used as antidepressant are divided as tricyclic antidepressants and monoamine oxidase inhibitors. Tricyclic antidepressants cause changes in the electroencephalogram similar to those produced by the phenothiazines. Their mode of action as antidepressant is not completely clear. Some of them have marked sedative action and some possess tranquillizing  dibenzocycloheptene and related derivatives are the tricyclic antidepressants. Monoamine oxidase is the enzyme mainly responsible for metabolising monoamines such as noradrenaline. These drugs may act by increasing the concentration of amines in the brain. The mechanism of their action as antidepressant in not fully understood.

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