As described by the world health organization (WHO), depression is the most common and serious disorder leading to suicide. Numbers of synthetic drugs are available for the treatment of this fatal disease, but are associated with serious complications. A wide diversity of animal models has been used to examine antidepressant activity. These range from relatively simple models sensitive to acute treatment, to highly sophisticated models. The number of validated animal models for affective disorders is large and still growing. A basic understanding of the underlying disease processes in depression is lacking, and therefore, recreating the disease in animal models is not possible. For the animal model of depression, the relevance, reliability and reproducibility in laboratories need to be focused, currently used models of depression attempt to produce quantifiable correlates of human symptoms in experimental animals and the animal modeling remains a potentially important approach towards understanding neurochemical and neurobiological mechanisms in depression. Animal models of depression attempt to represent some aspect of the etiology, symptomatology and treatment of the disorders, in order to facilitate their scientific study. Hence, this review deals with animal models that are beneficial for evaluating the potential of antidepressants. The present review further discusses the ability of currently available animal models for depression to investigate the novel hypothesis.
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