Effective against or serving to reduce depression, sadness, or melancholy.
From anti- (against) + depressive (from depress, from Latin deprimere, to press down, + -ive, adjective suffix). This term emerged in medical contexts before 'antidepressant' became the standard term.
Antidepressive is an older medical term that's been almost entirely replaced by 'antidepressant'—it shows how -ive (descriptive) got replaced by -ant (causative), because -ant better captures how these drugs actively work against depression rather than just being opposed to it.
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