When I was just starting out in the field of mental health, I dreamed of a day when the stigma associated with clinical depression would be removed, when it would be taken seriously as a legitimate disease and be treated openly and honestly.

I guess, be careful what you wish for?

I am shocked by the number of my peers who are on prescription antidepressants. And, not just one medication here or there to help them through a tough time. These women are on cocktails of different drugs which they intend to mix and match for the duration of their lives. Some are even adding small doses of antipsychotics to the mix to enhance the effects of the antidepressants.

Here is where I skate on the thin ice for a minute. I hope I don’t fall through. I have make my disclaimer first—depression is a real and potentially debilitating disease, with many biological and environmental causes. Some types of depression are believed to be entirely biochemical, meaning the person is born with a different brain chemistry and really needs stabilization in the form of pharmaceuticals. Just like how a Type I Diabetic is dependent upon insulin for their entire lives. Then there is strong evidence to support the idea that some people are born with a biochemical predisposition to depression and that can be swayed either way by external factors. I guess they’d be like your Type II Diabetics. Maybe if all goes well, the depression would never show up, but who gets a perfect life? So, with medication and the help of therapy, they can become stabilized and get beyond the depression. But, just like some Type II Diabetics can work with diet and exercise to get off the insulin, some of these people predisposed to depression can get off of antidepressants. So, the medications do have a very important, temporary purpose for them. People seem to respond more effectively to therapy when the medications help get them out of the gloom. They’re more optimistic and willing to practice techniques when the medications give them the instant relief from the depression.

But, the antidepressants are meant to be temporary in those cases. They’re not meant to be increased and added upon for the rest of a person’s life. None of these women I know are in therapy anyway. They just take the pills. Some see psychiatrists every once in a while for a medication review, others just get them from their family practitioner. Maybe some of these women are genuine sufferers from the entirely biological strain of depression, but I’m guessing not many.

The thing is, unhappiness is not depression. Disappointment is not depression. Frustration is not depression. And when I see these women in these enormous houses, with every convenience at their fingertips, rushing here and there to have the most perfect and immaculate life attainable, they don’t seem depressed. In my years as a mental health professional, I’ve seen depression at its worst. I’ve had patients who were nearly catatonic. These are the people who you worry that they’ll become suicidal when you start to treat them, because when they’re in the midst of a depressive episode, using the energy to kill themselves is unthinkable. It’s impossible. They need to take medications to warm up to a point where they can formulate a plan and rally their limbs to go through the motions of suicide. These are the folks who on occasion have shock treatments and these are the people for whom the cocktails of heavy drugs were invented.

All of these drugs, every single one of them, has side effects. Choosing to take a medication is making an active decision about your health. You are deciding that the condition of your current state is worse than the potential side effects of the pill in your hand. Every time a person takes a medication, that should be on his or her mind. For a great lot of conditions, it’s a given. The drug’s potential side effects are worth the risk because the condition they treat is so much worse. For others it just isn’t.

I just cannot believe that my peers are giving that sort of consideration to their health when they take three or four different mood altering drugs, adding sleep aids or stimulants as needed to counter the effects of some of those drugs. I can’t imagine that they’re thinking about their livers or cardiovascular systems and how they’re pitting them against their pursuit of ultimate happiness.

And pursuit of ultimate happiness seems to be their goal. Like I said, I’m not intending to judge universally, there may be a person here or there in the lot who suffers from genuine, chronic, clinical depression and NEEDS these drugs to function. So, if I’m going to hear from people shouting out, “Hey! I NEED those medications!” let me say, I believe you. I believe there are people who do need them. But, I also believe that those folks are the minority of antidepressant users in my area. I’m in an upscale, McMansion owning, Lexus SUV driving, competitive parenting Midwestern suburb. The people here are go-getters. They’re super-achievers and drive their kids to be the same. Depression is not prejudiced. I know that there are people who have it all and still suffer from this disease. I’m just not convinced that the number of people taking pills for depression is correlating to the number of people suffering from depression.

Which brings me to the next point. My husband and I were talking about this topic the other day (when he warned me against blogging about it, saying that I’d be misunderstood), and one of the things that came up in our discussion was how this population has always been this way. Maybe this is just upper-middle class America? Go back a generation to my mom and it was cigarettes and booze. In the 70’s, everyone smoked cigarettes and somehow managed to function with a good concentration of alcohol surging through their veins. Back a generation from that, in the 50’s and 60’s and you had cigarettes, valium and narcotic migraine relief (Darvon and Percodan were prescribed like candy—or how Prozac is today). So, maybe suburban moms have always had the blues. Or at least American suburban moms.

What is it that makes us so sad? What is this funk that plagues our kind, generation after generation? I know I could take a superior stance here, saying that at least I am not on antidepressants. But, the truth is, I’ve taken them here and there over the past couple of decades. I suffer depressive episodes and panic attacks. I’ve been in and out of therapy. This is something I’ve thought about from many sides—a sufferer, a healer and an outsider. And while I’m currently not on medications, I am overweight. It could be that while the past generations have used cigarettes and alcohol to “self medicate” this generation uses food. Maybe obesity is just a form of neurochemical stabilization we can do ourselves. It’s the one (aside from pharmaceuticals) that we’re persuaded to use these days.

Is it that the idea of the life we’re supposed to live is so out of our reach that it depresses us? We’re bombarded with images of perfect people living in perfect houses, driving perfect cars and posing with perfect children, so we feel inadequate? We’re shuffled between the food industry (tempting us with treats that offer short-term relief with the explosion of endorphins they trigger) and the beauty industry (tempting us with faces and bodies that don’t even exist in reality), and then when we’re feeling too low, there is always a pill (or five or six) to help us with whatever ails us? Are we just pawns in the big consumer game, pushed by one company, pulled by another until we just feel like we’re shit because we can’t ever reach the unreachable?

But, that’s just in my neighborhood. Other pockets of America use different methods to cope. Crack, heroin, sex and violence. All of those things are big euphoriates, too. So, maybe it’s not only the pressure of the upper and middle class. Maybe the image-manufacturers just feed a need that’s already there.

Maybe it’s genetic. An American biological thing. Our forefathers, whether they were one of the original bunch that bumped into Plymouth Rock or a guy who had the determination to take a little trip twenty years ago, these were people who had an idea in their heads of what life should be like and followed it through with a dangerous tenacity. All of us in this country, have a rebel in our blood. All of us have been spawned from somebody who declared they weren’t going to take it anymore and set off in search of a better life. Maybe that’s a thirst inside us that is never quenched. And, for some of us, that thirst is for a life that is impossible, because we have an image in our heads of it, planted by magazines and TV shows. For others, that thirst is to escape into a bottle, syringe or pipe.

Or maybe we’re just tired. Americans work more hours than any other population in the world. Our days are so complicated and busy and long. It has to take a toll somehow.

I’m not really offering solutions. I just think this is something that each of us maybe should look at in our own lives. Is it depression, or is it sadness? Do you need medication to get through, or do you need to make some changes in your lives (antidepressants don’t fix a bad marriage, they don’t get you a better job or put money into your checking account, and that Ho-Ho high is only going to last for so long)? Is the life you’re chasing even possible? Do you need to compromise with what your ideal is and what reality is? Are you overwhelmed and need a break, or do you need to stop your whining, suck it up and finish the job? These aren’t issues we can solve universally. One person’s cure can be another’s curse. Somewhere along the line, we’ve lost our compass for these problems. And we’re not going to find it in a bottle or on a plate. I guarantee that.

Bookmark to: