Andrés Ruiz
Aug 26, 2017 · 1 min read

I was pretty careful to emphasize that the effectiveness of antidepressants is contested, not that it’s been established to be simply due to the placebo effect.

Further, this retreat from “antidepressants work” to the much more conservative “well, they at least work on severely depressed patients” is a fairly common tactic by defenders of the current psychiatric approach to depression, and it’s revealing because when forced to defend the widespread use of antidepressants for all instances of depression, psychiatrists retreat to merely defending the use of SSRIs for the severely depressed.

So, you acknowledge there’s a problem, but instead of calling psychiatry out on its practice of overmedicalization, you instead defend its prescribing for the severely depressed, and once you’re done with the current argument, continue business as usual during daily clinical practice.

It’s fascinating from a sociological point of view to see psychiatrists acknowledge the criticisms of the profession when forced to confront the antipsychiatry movement and yet do nothing about it when the spotlight is no longer on you.

)

Andrés Ruiz

Written by

MA, MSW, LCSW-A. Zig, Zag and a bottle of Zen.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade