via reddit.com
FREEDOM. PROGRESS.
In our degenerate age, many more people are undergoing cancer treatment than ever before! A clear signal that our bodily health is getting ever-worse!
The relevant question, of course, is “in other times and places, how many people were suffering in such a way that they would have benefited from taking antidepressants?” (Also, I suppose, “how many of those people would have been women in their 40s and 50s?”)
This is, of course, not the sort of question for which useful data can be found. But I certainly have my suspicions.
the implicit point made here is that antidepressants are overprescribed. it wouldnt be the first time doctors overprescribe medicine and so this factoid is presented in a context of mistrust of pharmaceutical companies and doctors.
another question that should be asked is how effective are antidepressants really in mitigating the effects of depression. it’s certainly a step in the right direction that our society is at least acknowledging that mental health is something to be treated. however, in my statistically insignificant experience with people who have taken antidepressants, it has made them apathetic to the world around them (which caused them to stop taking it) or simply not worked.
that being said, a drug is not put on the market if it has not been shown to work at least some of the time. but I am of the opinion that simply taking a drug to balance out your neurotransmitters may not get to the root of why you are feeling depressed in the first place and will possibly provide only temporary relief.
That…might be the implicit point. If so, it’s not being argued very well – you’d need some kind of actual evidence, or argument, to the effect that the antidepressant prescription rate should be noticeably lower – but it’s something I’d be prepared to believe, and at the very least I have no particular dog in that fight.
One way or another, though, that’s not the “implicit point” that a lot of the readers are getting from that post, judging from the comments.
They’re reading it as “modern American society is terrible, especially for middle-aged women, which is why so many people are trying to relieve their environment-induced discontent with chemicals; if we lived good and healthy lives like our ancestors lived, those people would be doing much better and wouldn’t need or want antidepressants.”
And frankly I suspect that this is what the OP intended. But it hardly matters, in a world where the author is dead.