Depression and Anxiety

This chapter highlights clinical depression and anxiety. What seemed like a major step forward both in the understanding of depression, and how to treat it, occurred in the 1950s, when evidence emerged that depression might be due to low levels of the neurochemical serotonin. In particular, neuroscientists discovered that certain chemicals that alleviated the symptoms of depression appeared to work by inhibiting the reuptake of serotonin into certain neurons in the brain. The chapter then looks at the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which are now used to treat far more conditions than clinical depression. Recently, doubts have surfaced about the appropriateness of doctors prescribing SSRIs for such different conditions, the effectiveness of these drugs, and the mechanisms by which they affect brain function. One problem in determining the true effectiveness of SSRIs for the treatment of depression is how little is understood about the biological basis of this disorder and how drugs like SSRIs alleviate it. A complicating factor for any attempt to identify a biological basis to depression, or for that matter any mental disorder, is the important role that the social environment plays in the genesis of such disorders.