My new physician, a condescending know-it-all who might be 30 (years old), suggested I try an SSRI to help cope with the noise of the city. My assertion that I'd tried them all was met with skepticism (There's nothing quite like having a child tell you you don't know what you're talking about.)
So, when I came across this review of Peter Kramer's book, I sent her the links. I know it's a waste of time; there's no arguing with a physician who, even after two years past internship, thinks the fact she made it through medical school makes her omniscient.
From the Book Review..
"Eli Lilly cleverly suggested that it was a shortage of this substance [serotonin] that accounted for people’s depression. Inventing a fiction that was eagerly embraced by the public and many psychiatrists, Lilly declared depression a straightforward brain disorder that could be eliminated by adjusting the body’s biochemistry. In the words of one prominent patient, Al Gore’s then-wife Tipper: 'What I learned […] is your brain needs a certain amount of serotonin and when you run out of that, it’s like running out of gas.'"
No one did more to popularize this notion and proclaim Prozac’s extraordinary properties than Kramer, a hitherto obscure psychiatrist with a part-time appointment at Brown University. Listening to Prozac, his paean to the drug’s miraculous properties, was an international bestseller that brought its author both fame and fortune."
L.A. Review of Books review:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/how-anecdotes-sell-drugs-on-peter-kramers-listening-to-prozac/
In the words of a 2023 study published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry,
a “comprehensive review of the major strands of research on serotonin shows there is no convincing evidence that depression is associated with, or caused by, lower serotonin concentrations or activity.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0
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