Prozac about

In their next study, Mayberg and her colleagues scanned the brains of depressed patients who had responded positively to treatment for depression in a clinical trial of Prozac. The patients were scanned twice, once before the treatment had begun and once again after six weeks of treatment. About half of the patients responded positively to the treatment by showing at least a 50 per cent reduction in their symptoms the other half did not improve that much and were classified as non-responders. For the responders, but not for the non-responders, treatment of depression produced changes in brain activation in exactly the same areas in which normal sadness had produced changes, but in the opposite direction. In other words, successful treatment decreased brain activity in areas where sadness produces increased activity, and it increased brain activity in areas where sadness decreases it. 

Prozac. If people can change so dramatically by altering even slightly the volume of neurotransmitters in their brains, we need to wonder just who we are and what exactly makes us human. Consequently, people s attitudes and feelings about psychiatric medications go well beyond questions of health and illness. These drugs often cause people to confront basic issues about their own humanity. In particular, we need to ask why medications that sometimes dramatically relieve human suffering make some people uncomfortable with their new, healthier selves. ... 

He told me to take two capsules a day instead of one, which, at first, I didn t do. In fact, I was thinking about stopping the Prozac altogether, torn between my desire for my old self and my enthusiasm for the new. I was concerned that Prozac, and the health it spawned, could take away not only my creativity but my vety identity. I was a diffetent petson now, both mote and less like me, fulfilling one possibility while swetving ftom anothet. Thete is loss in that swetving. And my experience on Ptozac showed me how few thete ate who understand that loss ot ate ptepated fot its exptession. ... 

I know I m better on medication. . . [but] there s been a persistent confusion about the real me since I started taking Prozac. 

The power of antidepressant medications seems most incontrovertible when relief occurs precisely on the time schedule predicted and is experienced as a complete cure. Emily finally found her way to a psychiatric nurse, who prescribed Klonopin and Prozac and told her Klonopin will really help you now because the Prozac won t kick in for about six weeks. In response, Emily exclaimed, T can t wait six weeks. I m going to die before six weeks However, the Klonopin, taken three or four times a day, dulled her pain, and within two weeks things began to change ... 

Having good friends at work who were anxiously following her situation allowed Emily to be forthright about medications once she returned to her office I started telling people myself, Tm on Prozac [and it s] saving me. A lapsed Catholic had experienced a miracle. 

In the last chapter you heard Mike describe the tortures of going up and down on different medications, each of which had distinctive side effects. A few years ago Peter Kramer, the author of Listening to Prozac wrote a book about human relationships entitled Should You Leave The book explores perennially significant questions about intimacy and autonomy— How do we choose our partners How well do we know them How do mood states affect our assessment of them and theirs of us When should we work to improve a relationship, and when should we walk away In essence, Kramer could have raised these same questions in his book on Prozac. In the following instances, however, experiments were abject failures and the only real option was to walk away ... 

In Prozac Diary Lauren Slater observes that though a great deal has been written about what happens to people when they become sick, very little has been said about the equally powerful consequences of becoming well. Like the inmates portrayed in the movie The Shawshank Redemption who cannot deal with freedom after decades of institutionalization, some of my interviewees found it difficult to contemplate—and sometimes live—a life free of depression or mania. They missed their illness because it is who they fundamentally define themselves to be. While the vast majority of those who suffer from affective disorders choose pills over pain, the choice is not as easy as one might imagine ... 

Going on medication gave this man an opportunity to test a hypothesis about the source of his marital discord. Once he saw that Prozac improved his depression but not his marriage, he had to revise the explanation for his domestic unhappiness. 

Today Prozac is to antidepressants what Kleenex is to tissues. No book did more to awaken the public to a new generation of antidepressant medications than Peter Kramer s 1993 best-seller Listening to Prozac. Kramer previewed a world in which what is constant in the self and what is mutable, what is necessary and what is contingent, would need. .. to be revised. All this was summed up in what Kramer famously termed cosmetic psychopharmacology. He imagined a future of psychotropic medications so refined that we could choose whichever personality traits we wanted. Of course, it would be hard to distinguish honest free choice from the pressures to become the types of people favored by particular cultures. The book, in short, raises questions about self and social control ... 

World of Legal Drugs (New Yotk Bantam Books, 1998) Healy, The Creation of Pharmacology D. Healy, let Them Eat Prozac The Unhealthy Relationship between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression (New Yotk New Yotk Univetsity Ptess, 2004) K. Gteidet, The Big Fix How the Pharmaceutical Industry Rips Off American Consumers (New Yotk PublicAfFaits, 2003) M. Angell, The Truth about Drug Companies (New Yotk Random House, 2004). 

Similar issues arise in the widespread use of drugs such as Prozac. The psychiatrist Peter Kramer in his 1993 book Listening to Prozac describes cases in which patients claim that taking Prozac brings out their true self. The question becomes whether Prozac is in some cases changing a person s personality instead of fixing any perceived and possibly nonexistent disorder. Such cases have led to concerns about excessive use of these drugs, as well as the development of other medications that do not alleviate symptoms of a disease but instead make the consumer artificially happy or contented. 

The psychiatrist Peter Kramer publishes Listening to Prozac, a book about the first SSRI antidepressant that contributes to the popularity of the drug and other SSRIs. 

Kramer, Peter. Listening to Prozac. New York Viking, 1993. This influential book argued that Prozac, the first popular SSRI to treat depression, did more than deal with emotional problems—it also changed the personalities of many who took the drug. This led Kramer to speculate in his book about the nature of personality and self, but most took from the book that SSRIs could have amazing results and might benefit those without serious depression. The book both created controversy and contributed to the success of Prozac and other SSRIs. 

Some naturally occurring neurotransmitters may be similar to drugs we use. For example, it is well known that the brain makes its own morphine (i.e., beta endorphin), and its own marijuana (i.e., anandamide). The brain may even make its own antidepressants, it own anxiolytics, and its own hallucinogens. Drugs often mimic the brain s natural neurotransmitters. Often, drugs are discovered prior to the natural neurotransmitter. Thus, we knew about morphine before the discovery of beta-endorphin marijuana before the discovery of cannabinoid receptors and anandamide the benzodiazepines diazepam (Valium) and alprazolam (Xanax) before the discovery of benzodiazepine receptors and the antidepressants amitriptyline (Elavil) and fluoxetine (Prozac) before the discovery of the serotonin transporter site. This un-... 

When a drug loses patent protection, sales drop sharply. This is a well-researched fact with examples of brand drugs like Lovenox, Prozac, DiLucan, Cipro, Claritin, and so forth, losing about... 

Stroll et al. (1994), from Harvard s McLean Hospital, compared the blinded charts of 49 consecutive inpatient admissions with antidepressant-induced mania with 49 matched cases of spontaneous mania over a 1-year period, from March 1, 1990, to February 28, 1991. The patients had been exposed to tricyclics (n = 19), fluoxetine (n = 13), monoamine oxidase inhibitors (n = 8), bupropion (n = 6), and mixed antidepressants (n = 3). (It is striking that these doctors were already aware of the risk of Prozac-induced mania approximately 2 years after the January 1988 introduction of Prozac into the market. Meanwhile, too many health care providers remain in denial about this significant risk.)... 

Jafri and Greenberg (1991) described the case of a 15-year-old boy who became psychotic directly related to his receiving fluoxetine. After his medication was stopped, he improved over about 1 week s time. Hersh et al. (1991), physicians from Cornell University Medical College, described an 11-year-old girl who developed a delusional system on Prozac. 

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