Jezebel: zoloft

Is Having A Baby A Traumatic Event?

Jessica — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 12:30:00 EDT

A new survey says that 9% of postpartum women suffer from post traumatic stress disorder. You know, the same disorder that Iraq vets and plane crash survivors get. Something does not compute here, especially when you read further into the Wall Street Journal piece about this increasingly common affliction. "Childbirth-related PTSD became more of a focus of study only after 1995, when the American Psychiatric Association broadened criteria for the disorder," the Journal notes. In addition, the treatment is the same for childbirth-related PTSD and regular postpartum depression: talk therapy and sometimes anti-depressants like Zoloft. At the bottom of the WSJ article, there is a list of symptoms of PTSD vs postpartum depression, and while the PTSD symptoms are more specific, they also fit the criterion for regular old postpartum blues. Of course, women should feel comfortable speaking up and getting help about whatever issues they have in those difficult post-birth months, but something still irks me about this classification of childbirth as "trauma."

Have we become so precious and hyper-conscious that something women have been doing for time immemorial is now ranked alongside war as a painful event? Besides, according to the Canadian Mental Health Association, the kind of anxiety experienced by people with PTSD is felt by 1 in 10 people — about on par with the 9% of women who get postpartum PTSD. Even Shari Lusskin, director of reproductive psychiatry at New York University Medical Center, tells the WSJ, "We don't want to overmedicalize a normal part of human development…Just because you had a traumatic birth, doesn't mean you'll get PTSD."

It's sort of a pat explanation to say that the diagnosis of PTSD in women post-childbirth is all a big pharma conspiracy to get women hooked on anti-depressants, and I think that it's much more complicated than that. Certainly, having a bowling ball of a baby shooting out your vag isn't a picnic for anyone, but the hysteria surrounding something so matter-of-fact is troubling.

Birth Trauma: Stress Disorder Afflicts Moms [WSJ]

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]

Is Your Antidepressant A Big Crock Of Shit?

Moe — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:00:00 EST

A dozen popular antidepressants don't work nearly as well as the "data" doctors cite to tell you they do, according to an FDA review. (The whole graph is after the jump.) The biggest grade inflators were Serzone, Zoloft, Remeron, Wellbutrin SR, Paxil and Cymbalta. Effexor, the drug that shame-ridden shrink confessed to shilling unethically in the New York Times Magazine last fall came in seventh. Which brings me back to an important part I was trying to make when I posted insensitively about fibromyalgia the other day. See, it is often times the people who think they're least susceptible to advertising — ahem, doctors — who turn us all into suckers.

No one likes to think we're prey to the shameless "Talk to your doctor!" come-ons of the advertising industry. We like to think we are too smart for that. We like to think we make rational purchasing decisions borne of a thorough survey of all the available options — or that at the very least, we are creatures of our own innate needs and desires. I can only assume that this is why a lot of you got so defensive when I joked that fibromyalgia was a "vague pharmaceutical industry invented malady." A few of you turn out to have fibromyalgia — and "restless leg syndrome", and whatever else I treated with my signature careless disdain. I'm sorry guys; I made my point less thoughtfully than I maybe should have. We all have health problems. But right now the most highly -capitalized, influential and consumer-savvy source of all that we know and learn about those problems — the developers of the drugs, the sponsors and publishers of their studies, the sources of continuing education to your doctors — is the pharmaceutical industry, and the pharmaceutical industry exists to convince us that our problems are "syndromes" necessitating a pill you take once a day. Ever wondered why the industry doesn't seem to develop anything you can take once and be done with it? Yeah, well. Ever wondered who that cute guy in the suit with the briefcase sitting outside your shrink's office at lunchtime was? Yeah, don't ask him out, he's definitely a player and he's probably a recreational Cialis user on top of that.

Anyway, apologies to everyone out there who is suffering from something. Just hatin' on the game, so to speak. If I spoke that way. Whatever.

Antidepressants Under Scrutiny Over Efficacy [WSJ]

Do Antidepressants Really Ruin Your Love Life?

Jessica — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 13:00:00 EST

Psychology Today has a trio of articles about antidepressants and love/sex that I feel uniquely qualified to comment on since I am both on antidepressants and in love (and having sex). [Braggart! -Ed.] The main article, "Sex, Love, and SSRIs" wonders whether selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (the class of drugs that includes Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and others ) "compromise the ability to feel love," because SSRIs inhibit dopamine, which is also responsible for the feelings of elation and ecstasy that accompany falling in love. The author uses the anecdotal evidence of "Megan," whose sexual side effects ruined her relationship with high school sweetheart "Neil." The anecdote felt so weak (a high school love affair dissipating when the pair goes to separate colleges? You don't say!) that I wasn't surprised when she also used a seemingly dubious statistic to back it up: "Approximately 70 percent of people taking SSRIs suffer from sexual side effects."

Whoa, whoa wait. Back. It. Up. I've never experienced any sexual side effects, so I decided to do a little research to see if her stats held water. And just by doing a quick Google search, I found several articles refuting that 70 percent statistic. Take this article from the Harvard School of Public Health, which summarizes several studies on the sexual side effects of SSRI users and reports that the highest percentage of sexual side effects in any of the studies is 34%. (Strangely, the fear-mongering subhead of the Psychology Today article, "How SSRIs Wreak Havoc On Courtship", is just as misleading, as the article itself notes that a diligent shrink will work with a patient to find the right combination of meds that you know, doesn't clit-block an orgasm.)

But could I be calling bullshit on this study prematurely? Perhaps! So I'd like to see how the medicated Jezzies out there stack up to Psychology Today's statistics. Take our poll below, won't you?
I can't wait to hear what you pillheads are experiencing.

Sex, Love, and SSRIs [Psychology Today]
My Boyfriend is on Zoloft [Psychology Today]
The Power of Love [Psychology Today]