May 14 / Simcha

How Antidepressants Work: A New Explanation

The following selection from a recent Elle Magazine article about the use of antidepressants to improve couple relations (The Couple Who Medicates Together by Louisa Kamps 4.18.12,) offers an interesting look at how anti-depressants work.

 

Many of us believe that SSRIs work by correcting a simple serotonin deficiency in the brain, but scientists who study depression now mostly consider that to be “last-century thinking,” as one Harvard neuroscientist put it. The new view of how depression develops, and how antidepressants work to relieve it, revolves around stress — wear and tear, that is, in parts of the brain that regulate emotions.

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