What Antidepressants Get Wrong About the Human Soul

Photo by Eutah Mizushima on Unsplash

Decades ago, antidepressants were only in their nascent stages but today, they flood the pharmaceutical market while an unprecedented number of prescriptions fly from underneath the fingertips of doctors. With their emergence arrived an entirely new philosophy on the origins of mental illness and what it took to treat it. The idea that chemical imbalances accounted for one’s inner distress was a significant departure from the Freudian perspective that had hitherto dominated the psychological field. This new “scientific” view proliferated in the 90s, following the splashy debuts of ambitious new SSRIs such as Prozac.

Antidepressants are surely useful, particularly in severe cases. But in mild to moderate scenarios, there is evidence to suggest that they are grossly overprescribed. Given that American society is swimming in medication to begin with, perhaps this is a development we ought to question.

The supposed virtues of these clever scientific remedies have been extolled for years now. And yet, is there not something alarming about the flagrant mismatch between present rates of mental illness and present rates of antidepressant usage? Both have skyrocketed — which begs the question — is there something we’re not seeing? Is it really correct, or even sufficient, to slap a biological explanation onto mental afflictions such as…