Some psychotropic drugs may be recommended to treat depression as they are believed to affect the mind, emotions, and behavior of an individual. But these medications appear to elevate the risk for various birth defects. As a recent study initiated by the University of Copenhagen suggests, the consumption of psychotropic medication ought to be avoided during pregnancy
“It’s all in your head” isn’t something a chronically depressed person likes to hear. In the age of Prozac, when adjusting your serotonin level is as normal as checking the oil in your car, it seems unhelpful to suggest that someone might think their way into – or out of – a disease of the mind.
Spend just a few minutes watching prime time television with its endless pageant of commercials for antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds and you start to wonder if USA really means the United States of Affliction. Such “direct to consumer” drug advertising ties into one of the most far-reaching criticisms in revising the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders…
An excellent Newsweek cover story today brings the sad news that antidepressants depressingly don’t work. Which is sad, because – among other reasons – a lot of people use them. What’s even worse, however, is that they work less than placebos.
It has been a routine week in my clinical and forensic practice. I evaluated a malpractice case involving a woman on the West Coast whose family doctor from a decade earlier kept prescribing Prozac to her for ten years without ever seeing her again. When she ran into emotional difficulty, she called this doctor who simply raised the dose and added a new drug, still without seeing her for a decade.