Depression

Psychiatry has proven to be among the least penetrable clinical disciplines for the development of satisfactory in vivo model systems for evaluating novel treatment approaches. The wide spectrum of disruptions that characterize depression highlights the difficulty posed to researchers to mimic the disorder in the laboratory. Nonetheless, numerous attempts have been made to create rodent models of depression, or at least models of the symptoms of depression. However, despite many advances there are no satisfactory animal models of depression available. More recently, there is currently a shift away from these traditional animal models to more focused endophenotype-based approaches. This is opening up more tractable avenues for understanding the neurobiological and genetic basis of these disorders.