Antidepressants work, so why do we shame people for taking them?

an article by Mark Brown published in the Guardian

British society just cannot get comfortable with the reality of medication for depression. Despite widespread use, they still attract disapproval. New research appears to strike a decisive blow against widely publicised claims that antidepressant medications such as Prozac, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) are no better than sugar pills for people with depression.

Elias Eriksson, professor of pharmacology at the University of Gothenburg and one of the authors of the new paper, said: “I think, once and for all, we’ve answered the SSRI question. SSRIs work. They may not work for every patient, but they work for most patients. And it’s a pity if their use is discouraged because of newspaper reports.”

Newspaper reports, well-meaning advice, punditry of all sorts. At some deep level, we seem to want people to be wrong for choosing to take antidepressants. Every now and then columnists circle like vultures over each new story about how doctors hand out antidepressants “like sweeties”, or that side-effects might turn you into a monster, or that the drugs don’t in fact work at all. Some 64.7m items of antidepressants were dispensed in England in 2016. Surely, people ask, you should try everything else first? Have you thought about jogging? Eating kale? Not being in poverty or danger or not having a history of terrible things being done to you?

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