EndGameNYC

I'd like to counterbalance this by reminding people that, among several psychotropic medications, antidepressants save people's lives. If you have heart disease and don't cooperate with your treatment, including taking life-saving medications, then one among the narrow range of possible outcomes -- none of which are good -- soon becomes reality.

Depression is a lethal medical condition that affects at least thirty-five million people in the United States alone. It makes the ride to relapse both predictable and as simple as blinking your eyes. Clinical depression can destroy a person's health, trigger behaviors that are self- and other- destructive, and convince the people who are suffering that they are losing their minds. In true cases of major depression, therapy alone rarely makes a lasting, meaningful difference, although it does provide the person seeking help with yet another perceived failure in life.

Depression contributes to increased risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, suicide, and the emergence of other psychiatric conditions. It wrecks your immune system and accelerates the aging process. It is a condition, an often protracted way of being, of suffering, that can take months and years to resolve. And no one can know with any confidence what if feels like for the person who is suffering.

When it was first introduced, aspirin was considered to be a wonder drug, a miracle cure. There was a time when alcoholics in AA forbid the use of aspirin because they were concerned that, working as well is it did, it must have had some kind of as-yet undetected toxic effect on people's brains and behaviors. All it did was relieve pain, lower blood pressure, and help people to sleep better at night.