Considering the high prevalence of depressive disorders, its social burden
and the limitations of currently available antidepressant treatments, animal models of
depression aiming at better understanding the neurobiology of this psychiatric disorder
and the development of target therapies are essential tools. Although these models fail
to mimic all the aspects of this complex psychiatric disorder they have significantly
contributed to the development of the field in psychiatry. In this chapter, we summarize
the main models of depression that are currently used to assess depression-like
phenotypes in rodents. Existing models of depression include stress-based,
pharmacological and genetic models, which are evaluated in this chapter in relation to
their construct, face and predictive validity as well as their contribution to our
understanding of neurobiological mechanisms involved in depression and
antidepressant responses.
Keywords: animal models, antidepressants, behavior, construct validity,
depression, face validity, genes, inflammation, predictive validity, rodents, stress.
