By Michelle Pflumm

Antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have become a fixture in many medicine cabinets ever since Prozac, the first such drug to receive US approval, hit the market in 1987. According to the health analytics firm SDI, in 2009 physicians wrote an estimated 52 million SSRI prescriptions for Americans aged 45 to 65 alone. Now, as evidenced by a flurry of papers this year, SSRIs are emerging as a possible treatment for a range of ailments from mood disorders to menopause.

“It’s only a historical accident that these drugs were used for depression,” says psychiatrist James Hudson, co-director of the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts.

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Prozac pills. Image: Brains the head, Flickr