Miranda Sawyer

No, she's really not.

Anyway, at the end of this book, there is this epilogue, which I think is like a really good magazine article about Prozac.

Because she's got stats in it and everything.

There's no stats in it.

And she basically says, okay, prescription of Prozac went up in the United States by 30% in two years between 92 and 94.

It becomes the second most commonly prescribed drug in the country after an ulcer remedy.

There's so many people on it that by 94, there's 11 million people worldwide and 6 million in the US alone.

And she said, which I think is a good point, I never thought that this antidote to a disease as serious as depression, a malady that could easily have ended my life, would become a national joke, which it did.

And then the other point that she makes is that...

It's the beginning of what we are talking about now.

So the mental illness is now categorized and maybe mainstream, she said.

It's about the mainstreaming of mental illness in general and depression in particular.

It's about a state of mind once considered tragic that has become completely commonplace.

Those born after 1955 are three times as likely to be diagnosed with it.

So what she's saying, what she's intuiting actually, is that mental illness will become not commonplace but mainstream and there is money to be made out of it.

And she's saying, so obviously the kind of part of the whole book is that she is having a bad time.

She can't find the right thing to cure it, like therapy or different drugs or whatever.

But also that she doesn't want a cure as well, which I like the push-pull and her love affair with it.

as well but she at the end in this kind of epilogue says that she's really shocked by how easy it has become to get Prozac and she says there's doctors writing scripts after three minutes consultation that is exactly like it is now so Prozac in particular now I mean interestingly because this is Gen X is prescribed really really quickly to women in who've got menopause right like it's just like they don't want to give you HRT they go you know what just take this and cheer up love yeah

It's not that bad.