Stress Models of Depression: A Question of Bad Timing

Current antidepressant pharmacotherapy remains unsatisfactory because of its limited adherence and partial therapeutic efficacy. Accordingly, there is a crucial need of validated animal models that fully reflect the nature of the disease and do not only separate facets of the disorder. We read with great interest the recent publication of Mul et al. (2016) reporting that, although the 5 d forced swimming stress model (5D-FSSM) of depression effectively increased floating behavior for 4 weeks, other depressive-like indexes, such as the sucrose preference test, were unaltered. Hence, they conclude that the 5D-FSSM model lacks “construct or face validity to model human depression.” As these data clearly contrast with those from previous published studies (Sun et al., 2011; Serchov et al., 2015), an obvious question is …