Antidepressants

The last stop on this journey through the melancholic prescriptions brings us to a sight that may be more recognizable to people today. Sitting on a counter is a little pharmaceutical container with a prescription for antidepressants. Today, the term melancholy has fallen out of favor and has more or less been replaced with depression. This diagnosis is running rampant through the world, with more than 350 million people suffering with this mental illness (World Health Organization). Luckily, as time has progressed, so has our understanding of what depression actually is and how we can try to help people suffering with it.

Depression is becoming more normalized in society today. While this helps people be more willing and able to talk about it and get help, it also makes people not realize how important this subject is. There has been a large amount of research done to allow scientists to get a better understanding of what depression truly is and how it affects the brain's way of functioning. When a person is suffering from depression, their brain's neurotransmitters tend to not be sending and receiving hormones correctly. This is what results in many of the depressive, and depression-like disorders illness that may plague a person. The work of Frederick and Goodwin demonstrate this as they took a look specifically at bipolar disorder. They concluded how a person who is suffering from these types if illnesses do how have correctly working catecholamine receptors in their brain. This prevents them from actually being able to produce the feelings of joy and happiness that people who have a "normal" brain are able to. This is further backed up by the fact that many stimulants that work on majority of people are not able to have the same uplifting effects on depressed individuals. Their brains are not able to take the substances and perceive them in the same way. While we have been able to learn more about these illnesses, there is still a large amount of knowledge that needs to be discovered. A study done in The Lancet Psychiatry describes how many antidepressants target the monoamine neurotransmitter function, but that is not always the reason for a depression state to be occurring. This is why more and more new types of antidepressants are being created, as they are able to target different parts of the brain in order to try and alleviate the depressive thoughts. As the study of antidepressants continue, it is becoming more and more of the goal to physically alter the way the brain operates permanently (Vetulani). As the pills continue to become more advanced, they are becoming more able to change the way that the mind is formed. By reestablishing the transmitters that are not operating properly, the goal is to eventually allow the patient to not need to continue taking the pills. This, however, could result in many issues as there is no guarantee that the one dysfunctional transmitter is all that will be altered from the pills and could possibly lead to other, possibly dangerous side effects.