These data gave us an important clue to how this class of drugs (formally known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs) might work. Before taking Prozac these patients’ emotions controlled their reactions. I think of a Dutch patient, for example (not in the Prozac study) who came to see me for treatment for a childhood rape and who wa

When I went through medical school and residency in the 1990s, I was taught that people with depression, anxiety, attention deficit, cognitive distortions, sleep problems, and so on have brains that don’t work the way they’re supposed to, just like people with diabetes have a pancreas that doesn’t secrete enough insulin. My job, according to the th

Most mainstream training courses began to teach that forms of mental distress such as depression and anxiety have three kinds of cause: biological, psychological, and social.19 They are all real. This is known as the “bio-psycho-social model.”