The person may have a legit reason to be depressed.

As a society we have come to believe that depression is abnormal all the time and for any reason. But Depression can be a normal reaction.

Medication has a place, but it is only the start.

A pill doesnt change the fact that someone may be living with an alcoholic or abusive person and it doesnt change memories of child abuse.

Depression can be caused by many many things…not always an imbalance. And it isnt always fixable with a pill. Placebo or otherwise.

Isn’t the Big Baddie in this saga, Peter Kramer, M.D. and his Listening to Prozac approach to depression. Doctors LIKE to think depression is a medical treatment because it means, well, more patients for them.

But, of course, KevinMD would prefer to go after DTC or lawyers than criticize medicine’s role in our society’s bizarre treatment of depression.

Actually, what is interesting about the SSRI stuff are the studies that show that cognitive therapy (plain old talk therapy with behavior modification) or PLACEBOs can be as effective as SSRIs.

This would perhaps suggest that the important thing is to get the patient to realize he or she has depression and decide to do something about it–which is precisely what DTC ads do. Thus, we should have more ad not less.