<p align="center"><a target="_blank"
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0452281326/ref=nosim/azlkoh"><img
src="http://www.thelancet.com/webfiles/images/clusters/thelancet/main_depression\
.jpg"
width="650"></a></p><B>Antidepressants and electroconvulsive therapy
are the best treatment options for depression</B>

Despite public and professional misgivings, <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0452281644/ref=nosim/azlkoh">antide\
pressants</A>
and <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0890422060/ref=nosim/azlkoh">electr\
oconvulsive
therapy (ECT)</A> are the most effective treatments for moderate to
severe depression, state <a target="_blank"
href="http://webdb.ucs.ed.ac.uk/psychiatry/staff/admin_pages/empdtl.cfm?id=20">P\
rofessor
Klaus P Ebmeier</A> and colleagues in a Seminar which reviews recent
developments and current controversies in <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0380810336/ref=nosim/azlkoh">depres\
sion</A>.

In this review of the last 5 years' developments in research into
depression published in <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673606679646/abst\
ract">The
Lancet</A>, the authors Klaus P Ebmeier, Claire Donaghey of the
Division of Psychiatry, <a target="_blank"
href="http://webdb.ucs.ed.ac.uk/psychiatry/staff/admin_pages/empdtl.cfm?id=20">U\
niversity
of Edinburgh</A> and J Douglas Steele of the Department of Mental
Health, <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.abdn.ac.uk/mentalhealth/stafflist.hti">University of
Aberdeen</A> focus on recent advances and current controversies.

They cover epidemiology and basic science as well as the treatment of
depression in adults in all its forms. Depression in childhood and
adolescence, as well as in old age has been covered in recent
<I>Seminars in The Lancet</I>.

Depression in adulthood remains a very common and under-treated
condition, resulting in a high degree of disability. Increasingly
detailed knowledge about impairment of information processing in
depression is being supplemented by quantitative studies of the brain
processes underlying these impairments. Most patients improve with
present treatments. The mechanisms of action of antidepressants are
not fully understood; the hypothesis that reversing hippocampal cell
loss in depression may be their active principle is a fascinating new
development.

Moral panic about the claim that <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743269721/ref=nosim/azlkoh">antide\
pressant
serotonin reuptake inhibitors</A> cause patients to commit suicide and
become addicted to their medication may have disconcerted the public
and members of the medical profession. The authors describe the
considerable effort that has gone into collecting evidence to
enlighten this debate.

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