[Advances in antidepressants and research methods of depression]

Depression, a mental illness marked by feeling of extreme sadness, hopeless and inadequately, has been attached much importance. In this review, we summarized the research development of antidepressants, especially the active constituents, the extracts and the compound Chinese medicine of nature medicine, through consulting the relevant papers; and animal models of depression, have been utilized to screen novel drugs with antidepressant, were compared with clinical efficacy to evaluate the concordance, weak links and clinical values. Although animal models of depression fail to be unequivocally valid, also depression models generally lack both clinical and scientific credibility, they represent the tool to define potential antidepressant activity of drugs by far. Animal modeling remains a potentially important approach towards understanding neurobiological mechanisms in depression.