The age of depression

Depression can be a serious and sometimes life-threatening condition, and depressive disorders must be taken seriously. In addition, one might argue that in many cases there is no good reason why people suffering from normal sadness should be prevented from taking antidepressant medication, if it proves effective and safe to do so.

Freud was surely incorrect, at least in relation to our contemporary medical practices, to assert that "it never occurs to us" to treat such painful normal conditions medically. Whether public policy ought to encourage such treatment broadly, and whether such treatment if widely adopted might somehow reduce the depth of human experience of loss and thus indirectly of caring, are further questions in need of exploration. Offering skilled help to those who are suffering and capable of benefiting from such help, whether disordered or nondisordered, is a moral imperative. But it is not clear that relabeling normal forms of misery as depressive disorder is beneficial or yields wise public policy.

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