Newsweek again

I don't like to go over the same material lots of time -- although isn't that what most of life is anyway? But my wife still gets Newsweek -- she's been getting it since high school, and that was a while ago. And while she may be one of the two dozen people who actually subscribe to what at one time was a magazine that measured the pulse of the nation, it still has enough power to bother me.

The cover story is by Sharon Begely, the woman who trashed on psychotherapy a couple of months ago and got so many of us therapists all riled up. Well now she has taken her sensationalist approach to journalism and focused on anti-depressant medication. Again, as is her usual style, she reads a couple of articles and takes the most extreme view and turns it into the truth. This time she feels she has discovered The Placebo Effect, which is something that has been around for about forty years. She highlights the fact that most anti-depressant medications are slightly, if any, more effective than a placebo. This is stuff I think that even I, a derivative thinker, have written about on this very blog about two years ago. (if it wasn't so late I'd dig up the post).

The following article in the same magazine was written by a psychiatrist who took the opposite position and extolled the effectiveness and life-saving value of anti-depressants.

This kind of shit is exactly what our President Obama was talking about the other day. He said that discussion and debate are vanishing in this country and it is all point-counter point, with extreme positions and conflict.

The truth about anti-depressants is very complex. Their effectiveness varies greatly depending upon who is taking them, for what, for how long, and how sensitive their body is to chemicals and side-effects.

In many ways the reason these drugs are so wide-spread has more to do with drug company marketing and profits that their actual effectiveness as mind changing agents. It is also true that they can be addicting, and that they usually cause weight gain.
But, these drugs also have been very helpful to millions of people, for reasons that involve a complex interaction of factors.

Hardly anyone, not drug companies, the FDA, clinical researchers who want to get more funding, or the doctors who give out the pills has the time, the skills, the resources, or the money to really do an objective study to tease out all of the factors. We end up with Yes/No divisiveness and half truths.

It has always been this way; back to the time of when we blamed witches and demons.

new look

I had last seen her about three months ago. She had come in with her husband to give it one last try. They had come to see me over ten years ago to work out what was missing from their marriage. At that time the kids were young and she was struggling to hold it all together.

They came back last year with the same complaint, She said she knew he loved the family but he had never figured out a way to show it. She had raised the kids while he worked at his job and on the house. She had gone to work and made friends while he had gone to work and worked on the house. She had invited him out to do things but he worked on the house and watched war movies and The History Channel. She had gotten depressed, took several medications and went to bed and he worked on the house and watched war movies and The History Channel. Two years ago she went on the computer and found a Christian chat room. She began to talk to people who listened to her problems and encouraged her to work on her marriage. He worked on the house and watched war movies and The History Channel.

When they came back to therapy she had told him many things she hoped they could do together, including having sex. He said he loved her but didn't know if he could change and didn't like to be told what to do.

I didn't see either of them for three months.

She came to see me yesterday. She was at least twenty pounds thinner, had her hair done, put on some make-up and was colorfully, but appropriately dressed. She said she had been to a lawyer last week and was moving out after Christmas. She had lost weight because once she made the decision she felt elated, went off her anti-depressants and walked three miles a day. Without him she didn't need any medication to cope.

She was looking forward to her new life. It is clear that she won't have trouble finding it --- although trouble may be what she is looking for.

When you're done, you're done, and often a new look comes with it.