Word: mood
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...what if antidepressants like Prozac were one day made completely free of side effects and served only to elevate mood? Would there be an objection to prescribing them for the entire nation? Every psychiatrist I spoke with still answered "probably." Some see SSRIs as a kind of mental shortcut that relieves patients of the need to work through their problems. Others fear that a nation on Prozac would miss the inherent value of struggle and strife. Dr. Kramer thinks there may be an intrinsic virtue in what he calls the "unmodified personality." Although this month the FDA approved Prozac...
...that raises an intriguing question about the future of mood-altering pharmaceuticals: If Prozac can make you feel better even if you are not depressed, why shouldn't we all be taking it? Is that the direction we're going, as the drugs become more socially acceptable and heavily marketed? (More than 11 million Americans already take some form of antidepressant.) It's a question that arises only because SSRIs are relatively mild and subtle medications. There are plenty of drugs that can make you feel better, at least temporarily--alcohol and heroin come immediately to mind--but they tend...
Researchers are finding that antipsychotics can help alleviate paranoid, schizoid and schizotypal symptoms. A variety of drugs--including mood stabilizers, such as lithium and Depakote; anticonvulsants like Tegretol; and SSRIs--may help control the impulsive element of the dramatic disorders. And while antidepressant and antianxiety medications do little to rejigger something as fundamental as personality, doctors find that if they prescribe the drugs to relieve the stress that comes with living so disordered a life, some motivated patients may then take on the harder work of talk therapy...
...health sites and, using various checklists, tried to determine what, if anything, was wrong with me. I started by screening myself for bipolar disorder, the subject of a TV commercial that had alarmed me with its suggestion that frantic housepainting might indicate an illness. "Some individuals notice that their mood and/or energy levels shift drastically from time to time," read the first line of one Web questionnaire. Did the statement apply to me? It did. I checked it. (I might safely have checked it for my wife as well...
When I scored myself, I discovered that there's a "moderate likelihood" that I am, in fact, bipolar and a candidate for drugs to moderate mood swings. Further delving yielded more disturbing news. From a feature titled "Does This Sound Like You?" on the National Institute of Mental Health's site ("You get tired easily, yet have trouble sleeping" was one statement that I found particularly relevant), I learned that I may also suffer from generalized anxiety disorder. What don't I have? I'm probably free of social phobia. Sweating and shaking when others look my way doesn...