What we take for granted after 30 years of Prozac

When Prozac first entered the psychiatry scene in in the late ’80s, the profession was still Freud’s territory. Many considered taking medication to treat depression a failure. But that was all about to change, as early stewards like psychiatrist Peter Kramer refused to shy away from the new drug’s potential. These days, he says that people take for granted all of the progress that’s been made with antidepressant treatment in the past three decades.

“If you were going to be depressed any time in history and were interested in having an effective treatment, you would want to be alive now. But we’ve lost our wonderment about that,” said Kramer, the author of the groundbreaking 1993 book “Listening to Prozac.”

This week, Kramer joins me to discuss how the country’s relationship with antidepressants has changed since the publication of his book three decades ago. The conversation is based on his First Opinion, “What antidepressants are saying 30 years after the publication of ‘Listening to Prozac.’”

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