The market for new antidepressants for depression and anxiety is as lucrative for the pharmacists and drug companies as it is complex for those who need help in dealing with their depression. While these types of medication are not meant to make people happy, rather, they are focused on balancing the chemicals in the brain. When these chemicals are out of sorts it can alter a person’s mood. There are different levels of depression, therefore requiring for each case to be looked at closely to make sure what medication is the most appropriate for the person in question. While antidepressants can be very beneficial, they should not be abused or used as the first and only resort for those with depression.
There are constant studies being done in order to keep finding new and more effective ways to neutralize the affects of depression. Typically, it takes a few weeks for antidepressant drugs to start working. Consequently, a lot of attention has been given to rapid acting drugs. In a new issue of Biological Psychiatry, there was a new study revealed that showed the drug known as scopolamine caused a noticeable difference in mood within a matter of days rather than weeks.
By blocking the muscarinic cholinergic receptor, it was revealed that this medicine was able to alleviate depression symptoms rather quickly. Additionally, the initial promising results were shown to last during the placebo period of the study, implying that the intended effect would persist for at least two weeks without further treatment. However, like older trycyclic antidepressants which also used this method of action, there is some increase in the common side effects of new antidepressants.
Of course, there is much to be done before scopolamine is able to be regularly used as a psychiatric drug. It is a promising start to a potential shift in how we think about depression and it’s cures. One study expressed the goal, the potential impact by combining the treatments that deal with rapid results and those that deal with more long lasting results.