I saw news coverage about the 400% increase in anti-depressant use and well, I found it depressing. Here Bruce Levine sees hope in the Occupy Wall Street protests. I do too. Our mental state is not separate from our political reality. Our mental state is not separate from the state of all human beings everywhere.
So, another thought provoking and important piece by Bruce Levine on Alternet today:
400% Rise in Anti-Depressant Pill Use: Americans Are Disempowered — Can the OWS Uprising Shake Us Out of Our Depression?
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently reported that antidepressant use in the United States has increased nearly 400 percent in the last two decades, making antidepressants the most frequently used class of medications by Americans ages 18-44. Among Americans 12 years and older, 11 percent were taking antidepressants by 2005-2008 (the most recently reported study period), and 23 percent of women ages 40–59 years were taking them.
Why has U.S. antidepressant use skyrocketed? Are the symptoms of what is commonly called depression—helplessness, hopelessness, and immobilization—always evidence of a medical condition? Or is it time to repoliticize a great deal of our despair, and reconsider the old-fashioned antidepressant of political activism? (read the rest here)
To read more articles by Bruce Levine on this blog go here and scroll down to the list of Levine’s articles.
Books by Bruce Levine:
- Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite
- Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy
- Commonsense Rebellion: Taking Back Your Life from Drugs, Shrinks, Corporations, and a World Gone Crazy
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