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Antidepressant drugs are as controversial as they are popular. And, boy, are they popular. As many as 1 in 10 Americans is on some form of antidepressant medication. Now a new study suggests that while the drugs benefit severely depressed people, they have a "nonexistent to negligible" impact on patients...
Researchers discovered the first antidepressants purely by chance in the 1950s. Seeking a treatment for schizophrenia, scientists at the Munsterlingen asylum in Switzerland found that a drug that tweaked the balance of the brain's neurotransmitters - the chemicals that control mood, pain and other sensations - sent patients into bouts of...
But the very idea of a drug so powerful and transformative inevitably had its naysayers. Critics complained Prozac and its siblings were prescribed too liberally and were still unproven. Some previously sound patients reported turning violent or fantasizing about killing themselves after starting the drug and used a "Prozac defense...
Nevertheless, sales stayed strong. By 1993, Prozac had been taken by some 10 million people around the globe. In contrast to the obscure antidepressants of generations past, Newsweek noted in 1994, "Prozac has attained the familiarity of Kleenex and the social status of spring water." Depression had begun to shake...
When it comes to pain and cold medicine, this may be particularly worrisome. Tylenol, NyQuil and other drugs that contain acetaminophen are among the best-selling meds on the market, with more than $2.6 billion in sales in the U.S. in 2008. But acetaminophen can also put stress on the...