4 ms·

There's some weird causality here, seemingly suggesting that Prozac caused an increase in depression. >"Prozac was introduced in 1988, and we all know what hap

There's some weird causality here, seemingly suggesting that Prozac caused an increase in depression. >"Prozac was introduced in 1988, and we all know what happened then. Depression went from a relatively rare condition (affecting well under 100,000 people in the 1950s) to an epidemic disease affecting 27 million Americans. " I'm pretty sure more than 100,000 people suffered from depression in the US in 1950. They might have just gone undiagnosed and self-medicated with alcohol rather than (non-existent) pharmaceuticals. Given that the mental health state of the art in 1950 was an icepick to the frontal lobe, I can hardly blame them for not seeking treatment. I would imagine that the increase in _diagnosed_ depressed patients occurred because of an increase in both awareness and viable treatment options.

tlrobinson 14y ago
The same author wrote an article called "Lung Cancer and the Power of Suggestion" recently, which would suggest his hypothesis: http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2013/02/lung-cancer-and-power-of-suggestion.html http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2013/02/lung-cancer-and-power...
senorprogrammer 14y ago
As you note the article does really a very poor job examining that connection. Interestingly, your assumption differed a bit from mine. My assumption about that line was this: the availability of drugs for depression, and thus likely drug reps and salespeople, increased, providing greater incentives for profit through prescription, and thus increased diagnosis. Our biases at work.