However, recent studies have shown that java really does function as an antidepressant, raising spirits of people who regularly drink stuff. It acts on central nervous system and has mild antidepressant effects.

Coffee and depression studies have found that drinking it reduced rate of suicide in large demographic populations observed.

The first coffee and depression study that raised topic of java as an antidepressant was done in 1993. In this study, a Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program study of 128,934 nurses found that java drinkers were significantly less likely to commit suicide than nondrinkers.

This Nurse’s Health Study on coffee and depression did not go so far as to establish a causal relationship between java drinking and drop in suicide rate. The study stated that it could be that coffees itself had little to do with it, but that people who drink coffee share other characteristics that make them less likely to commit suicide.

A second study on coffee and depression, however, confirmed these controversial findings and went farther as to state that it was coffee that dropped suicide rate. This study was especially noteworthy, as it was large-scale and adjusted for confounding factors.

Published in Archives of Internal Medicine in 1996, study followed more than 86,000 registered nurses in United States between 34 and 59 years of age for ten years. Dr. Ichiro Kawachi, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School who led this study, looked at data from Kaiser Permanente study hoping to discount their findings.