Behavioural despair test
Animal test of antidepressant effectiveness / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The behavioural despair test (or Porsolt forced swimming test) is a test, centered on a rodent's response to the threat of drowning, whose result has been interpreted as measuring susceptibility to negative mood. It is commonly used to measure the effectiveness of antidepressants,[1] although significant criticisms of its interpretation have been made.[2]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Forced-swimming_test.jpg)