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IRA FLATOW, host:
You're listening to SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow.
Depressed? Feeling guilty? Do you have thoughts of suicide, insomnia? How about your weight? Does your weight change? Maybe you're losing interest, or you're losing your appetite.
These are all factors measured on the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression. It's sort of a standardized checklist to measure how severe a patient's depression is, and estimates say around 14 million Americans suffer depression each year. At least 32 million Americans will do that, suffer depression, over a lifetime.
Antidepressants use shot up from about 13 million Americans taking the pills in 1996, to 27 million in 2005 - making depression, anti-depression pills, the most commonly prescribed type of medication in America, according to a recent study. How did that happen? Are we getting more depressed? Maybe we're getting overdiagnosed or we're getting overtreated.
On top of all of that, one recent study - in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association - says some antidepressants don't do much more than a placebo for patients who aren't severely depressed. So what to think of all of this?
Well, hopefully, my next guests can help us sort through all of this and explain and talk about depression. So let me introduce them.
Gary Greenberg is a practicing psychotherapist and author of "Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease." You may have also seen his pieces in Harper's, The New Yorker, Mother Jones, among others. He's in our studios here in New York. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Greenberg.
Dr. GARY GREENBERG (Author and Psychotherapist): Hello, Ira.
FLATOW: Hello there. Dr. Peter Kramer is the author of "Listening to Prozac" and "Against Depression." He's also a clinical professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and he joins us over the phone. Welcome back to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Kramer.
Dr. PETER KRAMER (Author and Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Brown University): Thank you.
FLATOW: You're welcome. Let's talk to you, Gary, first, and talk about your book, "Manufacturing Depression." Why the name for that book?
Dr. GREENBERG: Well, I named the book "Manufacturing Depression" because, like many people, I lived through the last couple of decades, during which those...