Extra: Times Article Inspires First TMK Post in Months
My heart skipped several beats today when I noticed this headline on the New York Times's Science Times section: "The Prozac Generation: Antidepressants Create a Kind of Identity Crisis." The article, by psychiatry professor Richard A. Friedman, was titled, in the print edition, "Who Are We? Coming of Age on Antidepressants." Uh-oh, I thought to myself. This is it. Someone else wrote the article that I've been wanting to take a crack at myself for so many years.
I read the piece in palpitations and then, a little bit calmer, I read it again. Friedman does raise exactly the point that interests me—the fact that a lot of young people, myself included, are prescribed antidepressants as teenagers, before their personalities are fully developed. Because many people tend to stay on antidepressants for years after they begin the drugs, there is a sizeable group of people who feel as though they do not know what they are like in their 'natural,' unmedicated state. Friedman writes about a 31-year-old patient, on antidepressants since age 14, who is grappling with "how the drugs might have affected her psychological development and core identity." He mentions another patient in her mid-'20s who didn't realize that her consistently low sex drive was not, in fact, a facet of her personality, but rather a side effect of the Zoloft she'd been taking for eight years.
He doesn't go deeply into his patients' experiences or the particulars of their identity crises, though, so I feel, with a sense of relief, that there's still a little more to flush out. Instead, he spoke about his own quandary as a clinician, wondering what to tell his patients when they ask about the effects of long-term drug use or express an interest in going off their medications. He mentioned a groundswell of skepticism about studies of antidepressants, citing the worrying statistic that "97 percent of positive studies [about antidepressants] were published, versus 12 percent of negative studies."
Friedman concludes that it can be "tricky" to use "psychotropic drugs during adolescence," that antidepressants are too beneficial not to use sometimes, but that they do raise troubling questions that deserve to be considered further. I couldn't agree more. Next stop, as I see it: to get some of those patients talking about their experiences, desires, and fears.
I read the piece in palpitations and then, a little bit calmer, I read it again. Friedman does raise exactly the point that interests me—the fact that a lot of young people, myself included, are prescribed antidepressants as teenagers, before their personalities are fully developed. Because many people tend to stay on antidepressants for years after they begin the drugs, there is a sizeable group of people who feel as though they do not know what they are like in their 'natural,' unmedicated state. Friedman writes about a 31-year-old patient, on antidepressants since age 14, who is grappling with "how the drugs might have affected her psychological development and core identity." He mentions another patient in her mid-'20s who didn't realize that her consistently low sex drive was not, in fact, a facet of her personality, but rather a side effect of the Zoloft she'd been taking for eight years.
He doesn't go deeply into his patients' experiences or the particulars of their identity crises, though, so I feel, with a sense of relief, that there's still a little more to flush out. Instead, he spoke about his own quandary as a clinician, wondering what to tell his patients when they ask about the effects of long-term drug use or express an interest in going off their medications. He mentioned a groundswell of skepticism about studies of antidepressants, citing the worrying statistic that "97 percent of positive studies [about antidepressants] were published, versus 12 percent of negative studies."
Friedman concludes that it can be "tricky" to use "psychotropic drugs during adolescence," that antidepressants are too beneficial not to use sometimes, but that they do raise troubling questions that deserve to be considered further. I couldn't agree more. Next stop, as I see it: to get some of those patients talking about their experiences, desires, and fears.
Labels: comment
posted by katherine | 1:28 PM
|
0 comments
