ABSTRACT
Depression is perhaps the most ubiquitous and damaging of all the psychiatric disorders, a view quite different from that held in the 1970s, when it was held to be easily treatable, reversible, and seldom recurrent. This chapter will review the transformation of depression into a severe, chronic, and recurrent illness, marked by significant costs to patients, families, and the health care system. The development of antidepressants will be reviewed and will build on the biochemical models of depression and antidepressant described in Chapter 2 but will add additional data on the relevant biology and provide an introduction to the relevant neural networks, including limbic-cortical circuits and the default mode network.
