Cherry Creek Psychology, Dr. Maximillian Wachtel

According to the page hit counter at blog.com, my readership has dropped to zero for the past two days. Either my posts are incredibly boring and everyone has given up on me, or the page counter is wrong. I am going to assume that I am fascinating and the computer is wrong…

In the meantime, if anyone is actually reading this, I am still interested in your thoughts on antidepressants. One reader has posted some insightful comments (you can check them out by looking at my last post).

Thanks for reading (if anyone, in fact, is reading) –Max Wachtel, Ph.D. (www.cherrycreekpsychology.com; maxwachtel@cherrycreekpsychology.com)

There is an interesting book review published at Salon.com discussing whether antidepressants are helpful for society or whether they are a tool big pharmaceutical companies use to convince people they are sick in order to make big profits: http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/01/29/antidepressants/

A quick word of warning: Salon.com is a left-leaning magazine, so as you might imagine, they are going to come down hard against the “evil empire” of the pharmaceutical industry.

More interesting than the book review, however, are the (as of the time of my writing this post) 210 comments from readers. The comments range from individuals writing about how antidepressants kept them from killing themselves to individuals claiming that anyone who takes an antidepressant is a drug-seeking addict. I’m not exaggerating on either end–the responses are pretty extreme.

Obviously, people have very strong opinions about the necessity of antidepressants. I am curious to know what readers of my blog think about the topic. Are antidepressants necessary? Do they help? Are pharmaceutical companies manufacturing a need for these medicines to help them make profits? Is depression even a real disorder?

I will give my personal and professional opinions about depression and antipsychotics in another post, but I really would like to hear from readers to see what you think.

Thanks for reading, and thanks in advance for posting– Max Wachtel, Ph.D. (maxwachtel@cherrycreekpsychology.com; www.cherrycreekpsychology.com)