When the Treatment is Worse Than the Disease

Recently I saw a headline. I’m paraphrasing, but it went something like this:

“Scientists scramble to develop new antidepressants as suicide rates reach all time high.” 

That already got me thinking about this post. Then just yesterday, Elizabeth Wurtzel, the author of “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America” died from cancer. She was 52. 

It motivated me to finally do something I’ve been avoiding: gather up what’s left of the medication I was prescribed in just a three year period as I fought severe depression, anxiety, bipolar mania, panic attacks and ultimately suicidal ideation. The results were a little shocking, especially considering there was more. 

The problem of mental health has only worsened dramatically in the decades since Ms. Wurtzel’s book was published. Suicide rates in the US are up 33% just since 2000. And yet as a society we cannot seem to imagine a solution that doesn’t involve numbing the sufferer and subjecting them to literally intolerable side effects. 

Contributing to my hopelessness and despair in those years was the ineffectiveness of the treatment options offered to me.  Some medications, like xanex, did help--but I was relying on it heavily when I found out that you can die from withdrawal from benzodiazapines. Here are just some of the side effects I endured: extreme lethargy, daily upper and lower GI distress, rapid weight changes in both directions, appetite loss, severe sun sensitivity, and an increase in suicidal thinking. 

In short: the “cure” is as bad as if not worse than the disease. 

Call me crazy--many do--but maybe, just maybe, there’s a better way?