Wurtzel talks of mental illness, 'Prozac Nation'

"The depression had a physical feeling to it. It felt like something that was going to destroy me," Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of the depression memoir "Prozac Nation," said last night during a discussion on mental illness in Frist 302. Referring to her experiences with clinical depression as a student at Harvard University, Wurtzel contributed to what the Student Health Advisory Board introduced as a budding dialogue on issues of stress and depression on campus.

Wurtzel, who has been accused by critics of being self-absorbed and inflammatory, struck a suprisingly calm persona. She covered issues ranging from her personal experiences with depression to the greater implications of the disease and the drug Prozac in society.

"You probably have no idea," she said, "of the way depression was treated before versus the way it is treated now."

She recounted harrowing experiences with her university's health services in the years before Prozac and similar drugs.

Told that no medicine could help her until a drug overdose sent her to the hospital, Wurtzel related her appreciation of the positive effects of modern-day antidepressants.

Wurtzel urged students suffering from depression to seek help because of the severity of the condition and the obvious advantages of drug therapy.

However, Wurtzel also spoke of the downside of readily available drugs designed to treat depression, such as Prozac.

Wurtzel called the practice of psychologists sending patients to get prescriptions — even before "talk therapy" — "astonishingly strange" and an example of the problems that have arisen because of Prozac's wide availability.

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Our overdiagnosed, drug-taking culture has "made [depression] a terrible joke," Wurtzel said.

Though drug availability has "brought the issue [of depression] out" and made people aware of its severity, the adverse effects of overdiagnosis and drug dispension without therapy are also realities, she said.

"It's not supposed to be handed out like a vitamin pill. I don't want to judge, but I wish they'd be more careful," Wurtzel said.

When asked if she regretted her disease even though it had been a source of her success, Wurtzel gave an emphatic 'no.'

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"I'd give anything to have skipped it," Wurtzel said of her depression. "I don't think it's worth it."

She did say, however, that her depression led to her inerest in writing.

Wurtzel also spoke of the need for the depressed "to be especially careful to make choices that keep [themselves] happy," in order to live successfully with the disease.