Do Antidepressants Quickly Reverse Negative Affective Biases?

How antidepressant medications bring about improvements in psychological functioning in depressed patients remains mysterious. Investigators in the U.K. examined the immediate effects of a norepinephrine receptor uptake inhibitor on emotional processing in 33 previously unmedicated, mildly to moderately depressed primary-care outpatients and 31 healthy controls.

Participants were randomized to receive a single dose of reboxetine (4 mg, half the usual daily dose) or placebo. Three hours later, they were challenged with emotional processing tasks, including recognizing facial expressions, categorizing emotions, and memory. Relative to placebo-treated controls, placebo-treated depressed patients had less-accurate recognition of happy facial exp…