How Do Antidepressant Drugs Work?
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Depression
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Depression is a mental disorder that effects hundreds of thousands of people every day. It's a condition that effects a person's mood, thoughts, their self-image, and even their physical health. Symptoms of depression include loss of interest in once pleasurable activities, a loss of weight due to lack of eating or conversely a major weight gain due to overeating. Other symptoms are most noticeably a persistent sadness, anxiety, social withdrawal and fatigue. Many people who seek help in overcoming their depression are prescribed antidepressant drugs as a way to combat the symptoms of their disorder.
Cause
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While psychologists still aren't entirely sure as to the causes of depression, there are definitely some signs in a person's brain and body chemistry that offer some clues. There are over 100 different types of chemicals that flow through the human brain and two of them, norepinephrine and serotonin, appear to be connected with depression. Specifically, persons who are suffering from depression often have lower than normal amounts of norepinephrine and serotonin, two important neurotransmitters. This chemical imbalance is related to depression, but scientists cannot say whether or not the one causes the other or not.
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Antidepressants
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Antidepressant drugs of all stripes seek to remedy this chemical imbalance in the brain. What antidepressant drugs do is make it so that serotonin and norepinephrine, and sometimes other neurotransmitters, flow more normally in the brain. Since these chemicals regulate a person's mood, among other things, the proper amounts of these neurotransmitters being available for brain function can combat if not eliminate many of the symptoms of depression. However, if depression is severe enough for antidepressant medication to be prescribed, other recommendations are that a person regularly see a therapist and get out and exercises in order to try and stay healthy and regulate moods.
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