Listening to Prozac

Listening to Prozac

Author: Peter D. Kramer

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 1997-09-01

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 0140266712

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The New York Times bestselling examination of the revolutionary antidepressant, with a new introduction and afterword reflecting on Prozac’s legacy and the latest medical research “Peter Kramer is an analyst of exceptional sensitivity and insight. To read his prose on virtually any subject is to be provoked, enthralled, illuminated.” —Joyce Carol Oates When antidepressants like Prozac first became available, Peter D. Kramer prescribed them, only to hear patients say that on medication, they felt different—less ill at ease, more like the person they had always imagined themselves to be. Referencing disciplines from cellular biology to animal ethology, Dr. Kramer worked to explain these reports. The result was Listening to Prozac, a revolutionary book that offered new perspectives on antidepressants, mood disorders, and our understanding of the self—and that became an instant national and international bestseller. In this thirtieth anniversary edition, Dr. Kramer looks back at the influence of his groundbreaking book, traces progress in the relevant sciences, follows trends in the use and public understanding of antidepressants, and assesses potential breakthroughs in the treatment of depression. The new introduction and afterword reinforce and reinvigorate a book that the New York Times called “originally insightful” and “intelligent and informative,” a window on a medicine that is “telling us new things about the chemistry of human character.”


Puppy Chow Is Better Than Prozac

Puppy Chow Is Better Than Prozac

Author: Bruce Goldstein

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2009-02-10

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0306817624

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To Bruce Goldstein-an edgy, twenty-something New Yorker trying to make his mark in advertising-just waking up in the morning was an ordeal. Underemployed and recently dumped, he was well into the downward spiral of bipolar disorder. Even with therapy, lithium, Paxil, Wellbutrin, and Prozac, he could not shake his rapid mood swings, his fear of dying, or the voice of Satan, who first visited him one sunny day in Central Park. Then came Ozzy, a black Labrador pup (named after metal's "Prince of Darkness") who leads Bruce toward recovery through complete, canine dependence. From the depths of his despair to a life remade, Bruce shows how learning to care for, train, and love the hilariously loyal Ozzy provided him with the structure and focus he needed to heal.


Let Them Eat Prozac

Let Them Eat Prozac

Author: David Healy

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2006-10

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 0814736971

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A psychiatrist provides an insider account on the controversial use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) Prozac. Paxil. Zoloft. Turn on your television and you are likely to see a commercial for one of the many selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) on the market. We hear a lot about them, but do we really understand how these drugs work and what risks are involved for anyone who uses them? Let Them Eat Prozac explores the history of SSRIs—from their early development to their latest marketing campaigns—and the controversies that surround them. Initially, they seemed like wonder drugs for those with mild to moderate depression. When Prozac was released in the late 1980s, David Healy was among the psychiatrists who prescribed it. But he soon observed that some of these patients became agitated and even attempted suicide. Could the new wonder drug actually be making patients worse? Healy draws on his own research and expertise to demonstrate the potential hazards associated with these drugs. He intersperses case histories with insider accounts of the research leading to the development and approval of SSRIs as a treatment for depression. Let Them Eat Prozac clearly demonstrates that the problems go much deeper than a side-effect of a particular drug. The pharmaceutical industry would like us to believe that SSRIs can safely treat depression, anxiety, and a host of other mental problems. But, as Let Them Eat Prozac reveals, this “cure” may be worse than the disease.


Better Than Prozac

Better Than Prozac

Author: Samuel H. Barondes

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2005-01-14

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 019517979X

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Every day millions of people take psychiatric drugs. In Better Than Prozac Samuel Barondes considers the benefits and limitations of Prozac, Ritalin, Valium, Risperdal, and other widely used medications and the ways that superior ones are being created. In tracing the early history of these drugs Barondes describes the accidental observations that led to their discovery and their great impact on our view of mental illness. He goes on to show how their unexpected therapeutic effects were attributed to their influence on neurotransmitters that carry signals in the brain and how this guided their improvement. But Barondes reminds us that, like the originals, current psychiatric drugs don't always work, and often have negative side effects. Furthermore, none were crafted as remedies for known brain abnormalities. In contrast, the design of the drugs of the future will be based on a different approach: an understanding of the molecular mechanisms that give rise to specific patterns of mental symptoms. Using colorful examples of contemporary research, he shows how it is gradually leading to a new generation of psychiatric medications. A lucid evaluation of psychopharmacology, Better Than Prozac offers a deep understanding of psychiatric drugs for people who take them, those who are considering them, and those who are just fascinated by the powerful effects of these simple chemicals on our thoughts and our feelings.


Prozac as a Way of Life

Prozac as a Way of Life

Author: Carl Elliott

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 9780807855515

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In this collection of eleven essays, leading doctors and bioethicists discuss the pros and cons of Prozac and America's culture of self-enhancement.


Ordinarily Well

Ordinarily Well

Author: Peter D. Kramer

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2016-06-07

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0374708967

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Do antidepressants work, or are they glorified dummy pills? How can we tell? In Ordinarily Well, the celebrated psychiatrist and author Peter D. Kramer examines the growing controversy about the popular medications. A practicing doctor who trained as a psychotherapist and worked with pioneers in psychopharmacology, Kramer combines moving accounts of his patients’ dilemmas with an eye-opening history of drug research to cast antidepressants in a new light. Kramer homes in on the moment of clinical decision making: Prescribe or not? What evidence should doctors bring to bear? Using the wide range of reference that readers have come to expect in his books, he traces and critiques the growth of skepticism toward antidepressants. He examines industry-sponsored research, highlighting its shortcomings. He unpacks the “inside baseball” of psychiatry—statistics—and shows how findings can be skewed toward desired conclusions. Kramer never loses sight of patients. He writes with empathy about his clinical encounters over decades as he weighed treatments, analyzed trial results, and observed medications’ influence on his patients’ symptoms, behavior, careers, families, and quality of life. He updates his prior writing about the nature of depression as a destructive illness and the effect of antidepressants on traits like low self-worth. Crucially, he shows how antidepressants act in practice: less often as miracle cures than as useful, and welcome, tools for helping troubled people achieve an underrated goal—becoming ordinarily well.


Fluoxetine

Fluoxetine

Author: Graziano Pinna

Publisher:

Published: 2015-04-01

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 9781634820769

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Fluoxetine, best known by the trade name Prozac®, unlike other psychotropic drugs whose effects were serendipitously stumbled upon, was the first developed for a precise mechanism of action, that is, the ability to selectively inhibit serotonin reuptake, based upon the theory that increasing the availability of serotonin would treat major depression. Once approved by the FDA in 1987, fluoxetine quickly became the most prescribed psychotropic drug worldwide and its success in improving mood disorders has triggered the development of a large number of congener molecules, commonly known as SSRIs after their purported mechanism of action. However, a quarter of a century after its development, the idea that fluoxetine asserts its positive behavioral effect through inhibition of serotonergic reuptake is not firmly established. This book reviews several preclinical and clinical reports suggesting that the pharmacological effects of fluoxetine may be mediated by means other than the regulation of serotonin, including the regulation of gene expression, modifying epigenetic mechanisms as well as modifying microRNAs. One of the most prominent mechanisms for the therapeutic relevance of fluoxetine relates to influencing neuroplasticity by enhancing neurotropic factors, including BDNF signaling and altering adult neurogenesis. The ability of fluoxetine to rapidly increase neurosteroid levels accounts for the fast anxiolytic effects of this drug. Fluoxetine action at sigma-1 receptor or modulating glutamatergic neurotransmission as well as the combination of fluoxetine with other psychotropic drugs is discussed in relation to its therapeutic effects. While fluoxetine was primarily prescribed as an antidepressant, this drug currently represents a treatment of choice for a broad spectrum of psychiatric disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder and a range of anxiety disorders. This drug even possesses analgesic actions and is a valuable therapy for stroke. This book also highlights emerging evidence on the gender-specific effects of fluoxetine, its potential adverse features, including its addiction liability in combination with psychostimulants, and the impact of perinatal fluoxetine exposure.


Prozac Backlash

Prozac Backlash

Author: Joseph Glenmullen

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2001-04-17

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 0743200624

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In a controversial look at the potent drugs millions of Americans consume each day--for everything from anxiety to sexual addiction--Dr. Glenmullen presents authoritative information on why they are risky and provides advice on choosing safer alternative treatments.


Prozac

Prozac

Author: Ann Blake Tracy

Publisher:

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 9780916095598

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Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness

Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness

Author: Anne Harrington

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2019-04-16

Total Pages: 477

ISBN-13: 1324001976

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“Superb… a nuanced account of biological psychiatry.” —Richard J. McNally In Mind Fixers, “the preeminent historian of neuroscience” (Science magazine) Anne Harrington explores psychiatry’s repeatedly frustrated efforts to understand mental disorder. She shows that psychiatry’s waxing and waning theories have been shaped not just by developments in the clinic and lab, but also by a surprising range of social factors. Mind Fixers recounts the past and present struggle to make mental illness a biological problem in order to lay the groundwork for creating a better future.