What year was the first antidepressant marketed? Who developed it? Was Prozac the first "popular" antidepressant?

-- Melissa (honeybee2melly@hotmai.com), April 28, 2002

Answers

Check out the history at the following website:

http://web.grinnell.edu/courses/sst/f01/sst395- 01/PublicPages/PerfectDrugs/Chris/history/index2.html

Prozac is a late-comer to the scene, and probably not the first popular antidepressant, although perhaps it's finding a wider range of use. Elavil was probably equally popular in its early days.

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), April 28, 2002.

Lithium Chloride was among the first effective psychopharmaceuticals, first used in the 1950s. (As I recall, it was originally sold as a salt substitute, but its "side effects" were so strong, the stopped that and re-released it as a medicine for depression.)

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), April 28, 2002.

Listening to Prozac by Peter D. Kramer is an excellent source for your question, Melissa. I read it recently, and it gives a detailed history of antidepressant production and research. Prozac probably is the first "popular" antidepressant. It seems to work miracles, even in people who are not clinically depressed. For example, people who have very low self-esteem and poor social skills benefit from it greatly, as do temperamental and obsessive individuals.

The first antidepressant was iproniazid, developed in the 1950's as a treatment for tuberculosis. Eventually someone noticed the patients who were taking it were markedly happier than they had been prior to taking it, and experimentation with the drug for depression began.

-- Becky Parton (bparto95698@earthlink.net), August 04, 2004.