One psychiatrist at Northwestern speculated that the simply "giving the brain a jolt" was involved.
Current diagnoses, as lbo83235 points out, are clearly fucked up; but that still leaves a lot to explain. Bryan's storry -- _situational_ depression being helped by an AD-relates rather obliquely to an anecdote a psychiatrist told me in regard to his "pre-Ad" practice. He had this patient, a woman, who came to an appointment and told of (a) her husband being killed in an auto accident; (b) her son ahd been permanently crippled in the same accident; (c) she had been diagnoeed with cancer. He asked her how she felt. Her reply: Well, I really feel terrible about all this of course; but I'm feeling good: that is, her depression was (at least temporarily) gone. There was (at least subjectively) a definite distinction between "situational" depression and "clinical" depression. (The terms are clumsy. The important thing is the sharp difference, however labelled or explained. And in my own case, the grief I felt at the death of my first wife was _different_ from the black fog which on occasion would suddenly grip one from nowhere. Mydescription of that was it felt like a bucket of karo syrup had been poured over the brain. So a basic distingtion predated the 'invention' of Ads, and particularly of SSRIs. The "brain chemistry" explanation, upon which the flow of profits to the Drug companies rests, is clearly wrong. But there's no explanation which is clearly correct. And also, while much more is known abouat migraine than about "mental illness," a real explanation of the cause of migraine is equally missing. And there is a rather surprising overlap between "depression" and migraine!
I agree of course with the "market driven" account of the current use of SSRIs (and perhaps most psychoactive drugs), but that is incomplete. _All_ commodities are market-driven, but only some cause the damage SSRIs are currently causing. Tentatively, I would explain the difrference as lying in FDA policy: it's virtual "hands-off" policy of the last few decades had an effect on drug companies analogous to the effect financial deregulation had on financial companies. Capitalist enterprises simply can NOT refgulate themselves: unregulated, there is no limit whatever to what they may impose on the public.
Carrol
On 6/16/2011 11:42 AM, shag carpet bomb wrote: out of curiosity, did you have side effects?