<HTML><HTML>A couple comments, sadly without appropriate citiations, from some experience being a bean counter at an HMO: --Pills are cheaper than live therapy. That alone carries a great deal of weight but pills when they work also produce results that are more "measureable" than the results of talk therapy. --One of the big measurable "improvements" that help pharmaceutical companies market anti-depressants compared to doing nothing: a depressed person on antidepressants tends to cost insurance companies less in other medical bills than a depressed person not on anti-depressants. Thus pharmaceutical companies have an incentive to team up with insurance companies to go around looking for undiagnosed depression as a way of cutting other medical costs. --Pills do work for some people; for other people, no amount of pills will help if they do not also have talk therapy, measures to fight social isolation, and support networks, coincidentally for other threads, several concepts that are associated with regular practice of religion.... DoreneC</HTML>