Jezebel: prozac nations

Prozac Nations

Jessica — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 10:45:00 EDT

According to a new study from Down Under, men are more likely to discriminate against the depressed than women are. The research, conducted at Australian National University and the University of Melbourne, showed that along with men, less educated people and migrants were more likely to attach a "stigma" to depression, according to Reuters. The stigma of depression is so strong for some of the Australian population that 20% would "refuse" to work with someone they knew was depressed. These statistics are...depressing. [Reuters]

[Image via Exploding Dog]

Prozac's Not For Everyone? You Don't Say!

Jessica — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 09:30:00 EST

A new study has emerged from England, questioning the efficacy of Prozac and other SSRIs. According to the lead researcher on the study, University of Hull Professor Irving Kirsch, "The difference in improvement between patients taking placebos and patients taking anti-depressants is not very great." The study concluded that "depressed people can improve without chemical treatments...[and] there seems little reason to prescribe anti-depressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients, unless alternative treatments have failed to provide a benefit." And seriously? No shit. I thought we decided last month that Prozac, along with other anti-depressants, are over-prescribed, at least in the United States, by a health care system that does not provide the resources for talk-therapy.

They're also over-prescribed by a health care system that's in bed with big pharma. Eli Lilly, the makers of Prozac, were accused earlier this year of suppressing a third of the drug trials they performed in order to win FDA approval. From the New York Times report, it sounds like some of Lilly's original trials had results similar to the University of Hull: "In published trials, about 60 percent of people taking the drugs report significant relief from depression, compared with roughly 40 percent of those on placebo pills. But when the less positive, unpublished trials are included, the advantage shrinks: the drugs outperform placebos, but by a modest margin."

According to Dr. Paul Keedwell, of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, the fact that Prozac might not work is a good thing, because depression only makes you stronger. "In its severe form [depression] is terrible and life-threatening, but for many it is a short-term painful episode that can take you out of a stressful situation for a while, according to Keedwell. "It can help people to find a new way of coping with events or your situation, and give you a new perspective, as well as making you more realistic about your aims."

Again, a resounding No shit. Being happy all the time is not only impossible, but dreadfully boring and creatively stifling. There is a range of human emotions that we're all meant to feel. Dealing with post-modern malaise will, for most of us, be a life-long struggle, and severe depression (as anyone who has ever experienced it knows) is a different animal entirely. So to conclude, Prozac doesn't work for everyone, it's normal to be depressed sometimes, and big pharmaceutical companies are filled with crooks and liars. Call me when they discover that Prozac makes you grow a second vagina.

[Image via AdBusters.]

Anti-Depressants 'Of Little Use' [BBC News]
Depression Makes Sufferers Stronger' [Telegraph]
Researchers Find A Bias Toward Upbeat Findings On Antidepressants [New York Times]

Earlier: What's The Difference Between A "Real" Depressive And A "Lazy" Pill Freak?
In Defense Of Depression

In Post-Industrial Society, Women Are Either "Princess Crazy" Or Her Handmaidens

Jessica — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 13:30:00 EST

How many times has a dude accused you of being "crazy" when you think you're being perfectly rational? Well there's a new book out by Paris-born writer Lisa Appignanesi, Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800, which argues that women's so-called madness has been gerrymandered by shifting definitions that often equate craziness and "feminine" behavior. In a review of Mad, Bad and Sad, Telegraph scribe Melanie McGrath says that, "Our current expectations to be made, as one advocate of Prozac puts it, 'better than well', along with ever-expanding definitions of what constitutes mental illness, have served to turn us all, if not into Princesses of Crazy then into her handmaidens."

Appignanesi discusses cultural expectations of "madness" by citing the biographies of suicidal, cultural icons such as Marilyn Monroe, Sylvia Plath, and Virginia Woolf. According to McGrath, "We are not simple creatures,' [Appignanesi] says, in something of an understatement. By accepting, even colluding with, the continual expansion of categories of mental illness, we deny life's natural ups and downs and by doing so, impoverish its quality."

Appignanesi isn't the only one lamenting the over-diagnosis of a captive public. There has been much ink spilled on the over-prescription of psychiatric medication, and stereotypically (as Appignanesi points out), women are more demonstratively emotional than men are — so are they being more aggressively over-prescribed? Should we be pulling up the proverbial yellow wallpaper of our feminine oppression instead of swilling Prozac? As we watch former icon of ultra-girliness, Britney Spears, mentally unravel before our eyes, these are all valid questions to be asking ourselves. As we ponder, I'm just going to call myself a handmaiden of princess crazy because, you know, it has a nice ring to it!

Femininity As Mental Illness [Telegraph]
Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 [Amazon]

Earlier: What's The Difference Between A "Real" Depressive And A "Lazy" Pill Freak?
In Defense Of Depression
Boys Who Use The Word "Drama": An Investigation

What's The Difference Between A "Real" Depressive And A "Lazy" Pill Freak?

Jessica — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:30:00 EST

There's a major backlash a-brewin' against the use of psychotropic medication to battle depression, and the forthcoming book Comfortably Numb by Charles Barber, could easily be called the bible of that backlash. Barber, a psychiatrist, cautions against over-medication, and argues that, "anger, greed, laziness, impulsivity, as well as jealousy, lust, anguish, and so on, are simply part of the human predicament" and should not be treated with medication. Barber is attempting to draw a line between "real" depression and just being bummed out, suggesting cognitive behavioral therapy or other forms of talk therapy to combat depression. I think no one can argue that anti-depressants are over-prescribed — horror stories about five-year-olds on Zoloft litter anti-drug literature and Scientology screeds — but without prolonged talk therapy, how can you draw that line? And even after thorough psychiatric investigation, won't each therapist's discretion be subjective?

Then, there's the problem, as Salon succinctly puts it, of the "Serotonin Empire." "The Serotonin Empire continues to expand for a simple reason: Try getting your company's health insurance to cover the expense of counseling. Odds are, it won't. But it'll pay for pills," writes Jerome Weeks, in a roundup of several books about antidepressants. (No wonder that Eli Lilly, the company that makes Prozac, had its fourth-quarter net income rise six-fold last year!) The people are medicated, the drug companies are happy, and physicians — many of whom are not psychiatrists — are prescribing anti-depressant meds after consultations of as little as 3 minutes, says Salon.

Which is not to say that I am anti anti-depressants: I've been on Paxil, Prozac, Lexapro and Wellbutrin at some point or another over the past seven years, and I think I can safely say that at the time my initial SSRI was prescribed, I was far past the point of "bummed." I cried pretty much incessantly for over a month, could barely get out of bed, and was essentially unable to function. I have a vivid memory of struggling to make myself a bagel, and then breaking down into tears when the charred smell of burnt yeast started coming from the kitchen — toasting a baked good was a task both tiny and totally impossible.

Honestly, I don't know what would have happened had I not taken anti-depressants; I suppose I would have struggled through it, and hopefully not become Bell Jar refugee with my wrists slit or my head in the oven. Maybe I would have been fine, as I am now, and continued to live out my life contentedly. At least until middle-age (according to a new study, those in mid-life are most likely to be depressed). But of course, by the time I hit 50, Eli Lilly will probably have something for mid-life crises too.

[Image via Brandspankin']

Don't Be Happy, Worry [Salon]
Yale Lecturer Advises: Flush The Prozac And Hack Your Own Happiness [Wired]
Happiness Is Being Young Or Old, But Middle Age Is Misery [Guardian]

British Women Twice As Likely To Suffer From Depression; Three Times As Likely To Write About It

Jessica — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 12:00:00 EST

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser. A trio of first person accounts about depression are coming out this year in England, causing Guardian scribe Stephanie Merritt (an author of one of the three memoirs) to call 2008 the year of the female depression memoir. These three books, Elle editor Sally Brampton's Shoot the Damn Dog, Lorna Martin's Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, and Merritt's own The Devil Within, recount battles with bipolar disorder, post-modern malaise, and run-of-the-mill crippling despair. The article describes depression as a "hidden epidemic," and while I'm not British, I find it hard to believe that depression is a brand new malady in English society. Merritt goes on to note that it's been 13 years since Elizabeth Wurtzel's infuriating yet affecting Prozac Nation was published; do any of these women actually have anything new or remotely interesting to say on the subject?

Here's the thing: as someone who's been clinically depressed before, I can say without reservation that depressed people are fucking terrible to be around. They're whiny and boring and terrifically self-involved. Obviously it's their illness talking and depressed people should be treated with care and affection by their friends, but when you're reading a memoir, you're essentially hanging out with the narrator for 300 some odd pages. Unless these women are fantastic writers or have something revolutionary to say on the subject of X-chromosome blues, I imagine these books are going to be a painful slog. Just reading Merritt's piece in the Observer was an exercise in cliché and canned facts. "I couldn't cope with the smallest decisions," Merritt writes. "Often I didn't eat because the effort of deciding what wanted and then preparing it seemed as daunting as running a marathon." I'm not trying to belittle Merritt's depression, but her writing — that marathon metaphor? — is about as innovative as Wonder Bread. Not to mention the fact that she spends several paragraphs talking about the over-prescription of Prozac and other SSRIs, which was news in like, 1997.

I'll reserve final judgment until I read these books in their entirety, but in the meantime if you want to read a truly brilliant memoir of madness, check out Sophie's Choice scribe William Styron's Darkness Visible. If any of these new crop of bummermoirs comes even close to Styron's beautiful despair, I'll eat my hat.

A New Plague Facing Women [Guardian]

Earlier: Elizabeth Wurtzel, Hot Crazy Depressive Genius Writer Slut, Is Now 40

Do Antidepressants Really Ruin Your Love Life?