Coming of Age on Zoloft
How Antidepressants Cheered Us Up, Let Us Down, and Changed Who We Are
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- 9,99 €
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- 9,99 €
Descrizione dell’editore
A compelling and troubling exploration of a generation raised on antidepressants, and a book that combines expansive interviews with substantive research-based reporting, Coming of Age on Zoloft is a vitally important and immediately engrossing study of one of America’s most pressing and omnipresent issues: our growing reliance on prescription drugs. Katherine Sharpe, the former editor of Seed magazine’s ScienceBlogs.com, addresses the questions that millions of young men and women are struggling with. “Where does my personality end and my prescription begin?” “Do I have a disease?” “Can I get better on my own?” Combining stout scientific acumen with first-person experience gained through her own struggle with antidepressants, Sharpe leads the reader through a complex subject, a guide towards a clearer future for all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Drawing on 40 interviews with individuals aged 18 40 and an extensive reading of professional and popular articles, former Seed magazine editor Sharpe takes a close look at members of her generation who came of age with new antidepressants such as Prozac and Zoloft. Sharpe herself used such drugs after a mini-breakdown in college and says they made her feel "dull and flattened in one way... revoltingly attuned in another." Sharpe is excellent at detailing the positives and negatives of these drugs: they can relieve depression, and patients can learn to turn the drug from a crutch into a "tool," controlling it rather than letting it control them. But the drugs can also promote "a kind of emotional illiteracy, "prevent me from asking or noticing the reasons I felt bad...." She is also good on the importance of exercise, sleep, and diet on alleviating depression. But she is best at probing broader societal issues. In an age so focused on mental health, psychologist David Ramirez tells Sharpe, "there's almost not a language of normal distress." This is a fine book that nicely weaves together personal, sociological, and philosophical perspectives for a thoughtful view of how antidepressants are shaping many people's lives.
