We're seeing an unprecedented epidemic of depression in our society.
More people are being diagnosed with depression than ever, including millions of children.
The latest statistics I've seen are that more than one in ten Americans is on prescribed
antidepressant medication.
One in four of us is on psychiatric medication of one sort or another, again, including millions
of children.
And I would just say, we really have no idea what these drugs do to developing brains,
so we're doing a vast experiment with our nation's children.
There's also a great rise in anxiety disorders, which often overlap with depression, with
insomnia.
So by all indications, mental and emotional health in our population is not good and is
declining.
When I ask people why they think this is so, a common answer I get is that, "Well, look
at the economy, look at the state of the world."
But my parents grew up in the Great Depression, which makes our economic troubles look pretty
tame.
And they also lived through World War II, which is probably the most horrific human
experience in history.
And by all accounts American emotional wellbeing was much better during those periods.
So something's happened.
And I think it really cries out for explanation.
The conventional way of dealing with this is all focused on correcting imbalances in
brain biochemistry.
This is the biomedical model which sees all mind processes as being the results of brain
biochemistry, and therefore the only intervention that's thought of is to use pharmaceutical
drugs to change brain chemistry.
I think that model has proved very limited in its effectiveness.
There's a growing body of evidence that the most commonly used antidepressant drugs, the
SSRIs, work no better than placebos in most cases of mild to moderate depression.
So, I would say that model has really failed us.