Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 8, 2026
Animal Models of Depression - Chronic Despair Model CDM
Published on: September 23, 2021
[Validity of forced swimming as an animal model of depression]
Takeshi Izumi1, Mitsuhiro Yoshioka
1Department of Neuropharmacology, Hokkaido University Graduate School of Medicine, North 15, West 7, Sapporo, 060-8638 Japan. psyizumi@med.hokudai.ac.jp
Abstract:
Forced swimming is a brief and excellent assessment method for antidepressant drugs. However, a complete animal model of depression does not exist, because (1) we can not make sure the existence of psychiatric symptoms by interview, (2) individual clinical symptoms of depression were not disease-specific, and (3) there are few reliable biological markers of depression. We tried to summarize these issues by evaluating the validity of forced swimming as an animal model of depression.
