Länk - Deprimerad? - Nej bipolär, ny trend med konsekvenser för medicinering

The implications of reclassifying over half of all depressions as bipolar were huge. Treatment of depression and bipolar disorder called for radically different classes of drugs: antidepressants in one case, mood stabilisers in the other. For my symptoms, Goodwin scribbled out a prescription not for the antidepressants I'd expected, but for mood stabilisers. It took me a few years to gather up the courage to try the pills. (Back in those pre-pharmacological days, all non-recreational drugs were suspect.) Yet when I finally did down them, the results were dramatic. Within three or four weeks I could concentrate again enough to read. My anxiety and insomnia vanished; I lost weight. I even started writing again. (That very summer, aged 24, I actually wrote a children's play which was produced by the Kennedy Centre Lab Theatre that winter and still gives me royalties of $50 a year). I went back to Harvard.

Läs mer: Essays: 'Bipolar nation' by Annie Maccoby Berglof | Prospect Magazine April 2008 issue 145