History of Antidepressants
Antidepressants are medications for treating or preventing depression. Before the discovery of antidepressants the substances having exciting effect capable to cause a condition of euphoria (opium and other opiates, caffeine, ginseng) were actively applied for depression treatment. It is applied valerian for anxiety and excitability reduction, also used bromine salts. But the discovery of antidepressants in the early fifties became the real revolution in psychopharmacology. Since then, already for half a century, these preparations are the main means for the fight against depression. In spite of the fact that the era of antidepressants has begun recently, it already has the “myths of creation”.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, researchers experimented with various substances, trying to synthesize the preparation facilitating depression symptoms, but all experiments came to an end with failure. The first antidepressant has been “discovered” in 1957 absolutely incidentally when doctors have paid attention to the action of iproniazid which was applied at complex tuberculosis treatment. Except for the main effect of preparation, it has been noted also collateral which consisted of an unusual increase of mood at tuberculosis patients. Soon this preparation began to be used for relief of depression symptoms especially as tuberculosis medicine the preparation wasn’t proved its value.
According to another version effect of preparation was opened by Nathan Cline, and his opening was more than casual as well – he tried to prove by means of preparing the theory about the location of “ego”. During psychoanalytic sessions, Cline has noticed that problems on which they worked have unexpectedly ceased to concern some patients to whom he gave a preparation. Iproniazid has been put on the market, but it has soon turned out that it increases the risk of jaundice appearance, and sales of this preparation have been stopped. My Canadian Pharmacy offers a wide range of preparations directed to eliminate the symptoms of depression. Place orders now and start treatment in time. Read more about us to make an informative decision.
At the same time, Ronald Kuhn has been discovered imipramine in Germany. Kuhn gave to the patients various preparations in order that on their reaction to construct a global classification of mental diseases with which the German psychiatrists of that time were literally obsessed. As well as in the previous cases, the preparation has been “open” when at patients the mood began to increase. Imipramine still enters the list of official preparations of WHO and to Prozac, I was the most sold antidepressant.
When the first antidepressants have been discovered, nobody could assume that in only several decades of therapy by antidepressants will practically force out other types in depression therapy, and by poll results, at all, not the theory of relativity, and not the Internet, but a small capsule of Prozac will be recognized as the biggest opening of the last century as the carried-out at the end of the 20th century to the USA.
How Do Antidepressants Work?
If not to go into details, then antidepressants are capable to correct operation of some brain mechanisms. Our brain consists of a huge number of nervous cells – neurons. Though between neurons there are conjunctions, they don’t adjoin directly with each other – between them there is cleft, which is known as synaptic cleft or just synapse.
The problem of information transfer from one neuron to another and transfer its through synapse is carried out by the chemical intermediary – a mediator. According to the biological theory of depression during the depression in a brain concentration of some mediators in synapse goes down. Biochemical processes of our brain are very difficult, and hundreds of various mediators take part in them.
Today from it is allocated only 30 mediators, and directly three mediators are related to depression. It is noradrenaline, serotonin, and dopamine. They are called biogenous amines. Antidepressants, regulating the concentration of one or several biogenous amines, correct mechanisms of brain work which have been broken as a result of depression.
