Bliss is Best

90% of British teenage girls have felt depressed, according to a poll undertaken recently by Bliss, a UK magazine. A wide range of psychological questions in the poll produced almost universally negative perceptions; 94% of those interviewed for instance agreed there is too much pressure for teenage girls to look good. Depressed, anxious, stressed… it is a marketing dream.

Because… if you are interested in selling psycho-active drugs, and drug companies that manufacture Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI) self-evidently are, then these teenage girl views are what you are interested in hearing. More than selling the drugs, the key to successful marketing is selling the mental disorders, as David Healy (who has written extensively on the business of Psychopharmacology) explains in his contribution in this book. In other words, Prozac.

Prozac. Repeat the word to yourself and you realise instantly how successfully depression has been linked in our minds to the drug; a household word. How has this happened and what does it mean in our lives? Prozac as Way of Life helps to explain, Prozac being emblematic for the SSRI class of drugs that first appeared in the 1980s, and since then have sold and sold and sold.

The book takes up Peter Kramer’s Listening to Prozac (another contributor) that came out in the 1990s, and explores the philosophical and ethical territory. Carl Elliott (editor and contributor) first introduces the topic of existential alienation, asking how far the drug companies are simply medicalising what is a common human experience. Then further questions follow on; OK alienation, but alienation from what? And how does this debate get skewed in our ‘melancholic’ island, and by the strange ways we use our words.

If you like this kind of thing, plus sections on Prozac in American culture and the East, you will love this book. I do, but then I am weird kind of doctor who is hooked on this other emblematic word, Bliss. Bliss is best. – Now how do I go about marketing that?

Dr. Max Mackay- James is a GP in Poundbury, Dorset.