Depression – Antidepressants: SSRI

Transcript

Medical treatments for depression include medications as well as other procedures that may sometimes be helpful for people who are struggling with depression. Let’s talk about medications: there are many different types of what we call antidepressants – medicines that seemed to help certain individuals who are struggling with depression that can provide a significant amount of relief. The most common type of antidepressant medicine that we encounter and that we prescribe is what’s called an SSRI and that is short for Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor. These are medicines you may have heard of like Prozac (also known as fluoxetine) or Zoloft (also known as Sertraline.) They’re prescribed for depression as well as for anxiety, and they seem to help a lot of people. Basically, they are thought to work by increasing the amount of Serotonin – one of the neurotransmitters or chemicals in the brain in the spaces between brain cells. That being said, the actual mechanism is probably a lot more complicated than that.