Hundreds of laboratories, outpatient clinics, and university inpatient units around the world are searching for the causes of depression and manic depression, as well as developing new treatments. Biochemical, genetic, and behavioral research is being conducted, and many research centers both public and private are actively exploring new pharmacologic treatments in the expectation that they can develop new and better drugs that work faster, are safer and more effective, and have fewer side effects.

Much progress has been made. New drugs not yet on the market are being tested. There is good reason to believe mat antidepressants even more effective than Prozac will eventually be developed. Since the 1970s, lithium has brought unimagined help to manic depressives. Now Prozac and other newly developed antidepressant compounds are offering relief from forms of depression that the older antidepressants failed to eliminate. New drags being tested today should increase the number of patients who, though they may currently feel marooned on a desolate island or isolated beneath a dark cloud that never lifts, can in the near future look forward to a better, happier, more productive life that is symptom-free.

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