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'Listening to Prozac' author feels 'vindicated' by new antidepressant study

Wed, 2009-12-09 04:10 — Robyn

Peter D. Kramer, the psychiatrist and author of the path-breaking 1993 book "Listening to Prozac," said in an interview today that he felt "vindicated" by a newly published study ("Personality Change During Depression Treatment," by Tony Z. Tang et al) finding that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants cause dramatic personality changes in depressed patients who take them.

"It's hard not to feel justified" in the view--offered long before it became fashionable--that antidepressants now taken by 7% of American adults do more than lift depression: They nudge underlying personalities--even those of healthy people--into brighter, more appealing territory, and in so doing, raise ethical concerns about "cosmetic psychiatry."

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Time For Peter Kramer To Shut Up

Comments

Wed, 2009-12-09 04:55 — Robyn

listening to prozac

Sounds like another attempt to make everybody the same. To convince shy people that there's something wrong with them. To convince "sad" people that they ought to be "happy". To convince standoffish types that they should be "assertive". Et cetera.