Final answer:
Antidepressant medications like SSRIs and MAO inhibitors, while primarily used to treat depression, are also effective for other disorders such as anxiety, OCD, eating disorders, and certain attention and psychotic disorders.
Step-by-step explanation:
Although developed to treat depression, antidepressant medications such as Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) have also proven successful in treating numerous other disorders. These medications work by various mechanisms to increase the levels of neurotransmitters in the brain, which can ease symptoms of depression as well as other mental health conditions. For instance, SSRIs, specifically, block the reuptake of serotonin into the presynaptic neuron, resulting in an increase in serotonin in the synaptic cleft. This has been beneficial not only for depression but also for anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD), and eating disorders.
Furthermore, other classes of antidepressants, such as monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAO inhibitors) and norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitors, have been successfully used to treat additional psychiatric disorders including attention deficit disorder and schizophrenia. Thus, while the primary indication for these medications is to treat major depressive disorder, their use has greatly expanded to help manage a wider spectrum of mental health conditions.