Can stress cause depression? This is a question of considerable importance, clinically as well as scientifically. Clinically, because an affirmative answer would elevate stress management to a prime intervention in the treatment and prevention of depression. Scientifically, because if stress constitutes a depressogenic condition, the quest for biological determinants of depression should focus primarily on the neurobiology of stress and only in the second instance on depression per se.

Traumatic life events and taxing living conditions often precede depression. In most studies it is unclear what the intensity of the emotional stress response has been. Yet, those studies generally point to a connection between adversity and depression. An associative connection; they allow no judgement on a possible causal connection. Convincing evidence of the latter would require evidence that stress may generate dysfunctions in particular brain circuitry similar to those supposedly underlying (certain components of) depression.

This, then, is the key question addressed in this book. What neurobiological changes have been ascertained in (certain types of) depression; what neurobiological changes may be induced by stress; to what extent do those changes correspond? The emphasis is laid on monoamines (MA) and stress hormones, the two systems most thoroughly studied in depression. In Chapter 7, MA ergic disturbances in depression and their possible pathophysiological significance are discussed.