In the following article, I return once again to my favorite topic, societal mania. However, this time I write not about the fear of climate catastrophe that has firmly gripped society for almost 40 years, but another mania that has slowly enticed more and more hapless souls over the last 30 years. I will call it the Prozac craze, named after the drug that set it in motion.
Prior to 1987, the psychiatric profession was dominated by Freudian psychoanalysis. The whole profession possessed an element of quackery and humbug. Karl Popper rightly argued that Freud’s theories were not scientific because they were not falsifiable. However, psychoanalysis had the virtue of providing comic fodder for many Woody Allen films.
Then in 1987, the psychiatric profession changed with the introduction of Prozac. Prozac became a cultural phenomenon in the 1990s. It wasn’t just about a new antidepressant. Prozac seemed to reshape not only depression treatment but also ideas of personality, identity, and even normality. Boosters of the drug began to create the myth that depression was the result of a chemical imbalance and Prozac could correct that imbalance. Immediately, it had a certain appeal to the masses. No longer would one have to spend hours on the psychiatrist’s couch drenching up memories of childhood abandonment. The doctor could write you a prescription for Prozac and you were good to go. A new and better self could replace that old anxiety-ridden, befuddled mess inside your head.
It did not matter that the chemical imbalance theory was never proven. The Prozac craze took off and completely eclipsed psychoanalysis, which took on the air of quaintness. The monthly antidepressant dispensing rate among adolescents and young adults (16- to 25-year-olds) steadily rose so that by 2020 it was 3,500 per 100,000. No one seemed to be asking the question, “Was the mental health of this population really worsening to the degree that the dispensing rate would indicate?”
The mental health profession only took notice of it to celebrate that young people were finally accessing the treatment that they deserved. No mental health professional even questioned whether it might be a manifestation of social contagion. And why would they? They were also peddling the story that climate change was real and making our youth anxious. They alone could provide the cure for climate anxiety in the form of a magic pill.
Then in 2020, something gave away the whole game. The monthly antidepressant dispensing rate among adolescents and young adults made a sudden climb (see below).
(The source of the chart above can be found in this PubMed article.)
The surge occurred precisely with the advent of the COVID hysteria. Countless young people who had absolutely no reason to fear COVID became anxious about it, and they turned to mental health professionals who happily provided the answer in the form of a magic pill. Ironically, it was mental health workers again who were in the vanguard of those stoking the COVID hysteria.
There is a sad part to this story, Prozac and the other antidepressants, far from being a panacea, had ruinous side effects for millions of people. They have lost their ability to feel human closeness and connect with others all because they were duped by another societal mania.
Image generated by ChatGPT.