An anti-depressant pill

All of us go through depression periods when things in the world seem all akilter, family affairs are in disarray and relationships seem to be fraying. That is the time most of us resort to anti depressant pills. 
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently reported that antidepressant use in the United States has increased nearly 400 percent in the last two decades, making antidepressants the most frequently used class of medications. 

And why has U.S. antidepressant use skyrocketed?  While nowhere in the CDC report is there any explanation for the 400 percent increase of antidepressant use from 1988 to 2008, however, there are several common explanations offered by mental health professionals and journalists. Money is a large factor. It has become more lucrative for psychiatrists and other physicians to prescribe medication than to provide talk therapy. Actually, most antidepressant prescriptions are written by physicians other than psychiatrists and, according to the recent CDC report, among Americans taking one antidepressant, less than one-third of them  have seen a mental health professional in the past year.  

Antidepressant use has also skyrocketed because of the increased practice of prescribing antidepressants for many conditions other than severe depression, and prescribing them for longer periods of time. According to antidepressant manufacturers, the increase in antidepressant use has been caused by their creation of more effective antidepressants. Of course the real reason may be  their greater publicity that stimulated public acceptance. 

One publicity coup commenced in 1997 when U.S. government agencies changed the rules for broadcast advertising, no longer requiring full information about side effects (which had previously made it problematic for drug companies to run a thirty-second spot). TV advertising dramatically increased patient requests for antidepressants from their physicians. A largely neglected explanation for the huge growth of antidepressant use is that Americans have increasingly been socialized to equate all states of demoralization and immobilizing despair with a medical condition, and to seek medical treatment rather than other remedies. 

Depression is highly associated with a variety of overwhelming pains, including physical pain, relationship pain (such as a dissatisfying marriage and social isolation), traumas. But depression is as much about feeling hopeless, alienated, isolated, and powerless. Everybody will remember that their demoralization and despair was “cured,” at least for a time, not by a pill or any other consumer product but by their own actions.  

But now I have one anti depressant pill that I have developed after much trial and error. It works for me all the time and the best part - it has no side effects at all.

I have organized a file of photos of my grandson at his naughtiest and cheekiest. And  whip it out at the first sight of depression and point my finger at random at one of the photos. One look and all tension drains away and life seems so much more cheerful. Try it. It will always work!