Progress for Better Treatment of Depression

Abstract

Depression is a serious illness affecting a staggering one out of every five people in their lifetime. The disease is characterized by extreme low energy and mood, often combined with thoughts of worthlessness and suicidal ideations. There are many risk factors which we are now only just beginning to come to terms with. As far as treatment goes, there is still considerable room for improvement. As with most of the psychiatric disorders, the treatment of depression is often a subjective trial and error process involving administration and switching of drugs and drug doses multiple times until an adequate response is achieved. In many cases, this is never attained by using traditional antidepressant drugs alone and sometimes more drastic measures are required, such as administration of electroconvulsive therapy. This chapter describes how more successful treatment strategies can be achieved by simply improving our understanding of the underlying disease mechanisms. Several studies in the area of depression have now shown that particular pathways in the body are perturbed, including neurotransmitters, the immune system and hormonal networks. Development of biomarkers and disease models reflecting these pathways could lead to our increased understanding of the disease and, consequently, the design of better drugs to treat patients with this debilitating disorder.