Mental Health Blog - antidepressant treatment review

I was reading about Prozac in the Boston Globe article Head fake: How Prozac sent the science of depression in the wrong direction, apparently you should "... think of depression in terms of atrophied brain cells, rather than an altered emotional state. It is called 'depression,' after all. Yet these scientists argue that the name conceals the fundamental nature of the illness, in which the building blocks of the brain - neurons - start to crumble. This leads, over time, to the shrinking of certain brain structures, like the hippocampus, which the brain needs to function normally."

Prozac was working to help rejuvenate the braincells, but scientists were misled by the fact that serotonin levels were increasing. "The effectiveness of Prozac ... has little to do with the amount of serotonin in the brain. Rather, the drug works because it helps heal our neurons, allowing them to grow and thrive again." Prozac isn't a happy pill, but a healing pill. "In this sense, Prozac is simply a bottled version of other activities that have a similar effect, such as physical exercise."

technorati tags: prozac, health, healing, neurons, brain, serotonin