Prosaic Prozac

There’s disturbing news brewing on the psychiatric front. Pills for the disturbed are fast losing their potency, say a slew of reports.

There’s disturbing news brewing on the psychiatric front. Pills for the disturbed are fast losing their potency, say a slew of reports. A study published this January showed that placebos and drugs had the same effect on severe depression. Award-winning science writer Robert Whitaker’s new book, An Anatomy of an Epidemic, has posited a simple question. If Prozac, the blockbuster anti-depressant, is so good, how come the number of Americans claiming disability due to mental illness soared from 1.25 million in 1987 to over 4 million currently?  He believes that children who take pills for Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder are ‘more likely to suffer from mania and bipolar disorder than those who’re unmedicated’ and that schizophrenia patients without medication in India do better than those in developed countries. With results like this, it’s time to hold the mind-meds.

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