In the same spirit, Sharpe describes the experience of a new second generation of SSRI users in her “Coming of Age on Zoloft.” She tells the story of those who were put on the medication in their teens. In Sharpe’s words, “This is a book about what it’s like to grow up on antidepressants.”
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The author states that her hope is that the book will be useful to antidepressant users and their families as well as contributing to the ongoing debate about Zoloft and the “medicalization” of society to the extent that ordinary feelings of sadness and anxiety are treated as symptoms.
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The portions of the book where Sharpe’s offers the big perspective are very strong. Having covered some of the same material that she did, I can say that she captured almost all of the main points of the SSRI revolution. She does an especially good job on the rickety theoretical foundation that underlies the antidepressants. She points out how backwards the theory is in that “the cure” was found first and then the condition of depression was fleshed out. In her words, “Antidepressants were invented by accident — twice — and scientists drew conclusions about the nature of the illness by investigating the action of the drugs.”
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She touches broader issues, such as the “medicalization” of negative feelings and the incestuous relationship between big Pharma and psychiatry. Sharpe discusses the economics of contemporary psychiatric practice, where she points that a psychiatrist out can bill four patients an hour for med checks rather than seeing one patient for an hour of psychotherapy. She also mentions that the antidepressants have made psychiatry less of the ugly stepchild of medicine.
Coming of Age on Zoloft: How Antidepressants Cheered Us Up, Let Us Down, and Changed Who We Are | Psych Central
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