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Is depression a choice? Weigh in on the roots of our discontent in Table Talk's Science and Health area
R E C E N T L Y
The unauthorized Godzilla No irony please -- we're leftists R.I.P., Buzz Oklahomans to Tom Tomorrow: Your porn is as high as an elephant's eye! No glitz please -- we're British BROWSE THE
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THE TRAVELING DEPRESSION ROAD SHOW | PAGE 2 OF 2_ And worse, each point that the panel made about depression and relationships was illustrated by a five-minute segment from a "Party of Five" episode. For those depression sufferers in the audience who didn't get the concept that depression can screw up your relationship, the workshop coordinators kindly showed part of an episode where Kirsten rocks on the couch, silently ignoring her boyfriend's attempts to help her. To demonstrate how partners of depressed people can experience frustration, we got a clip in which Charlie tries to interest Kirsten in some warm coffee cake. Better-than-average TV, perhaps, but simplistic material by most measures. And you'd think that the sold-out audience -- by their own testimonies bipolar manic depressives, long-term depressives, wives and husbands of chronic depressives -- don't really need TV stars to tell them what depression is like. They certainly don't need the psychiatrists onstage gushing after each TV clip: "I was so impressed with the way Paula showed how depression had crept in on her body and her thinking!" and "I was so impressed how Matt captured the way you need to say, 'How can I be helpful?'" "We were trying to find a way that people will destigmatize depression, make it easier to talk about," explained the PR coordinator for the event. "When it's on TV, it's a little bit more acceptable. It made it hit home -- if it's covered on national TV, it's something that doesn't have to be kept quiet anymore." And, of course, depression is a real and serious illness, despite the Prozac hype that just a few years ago made antidepressants a national joke. Various counts put the number of annual depression victims at 17 million Americans (one in 10 adults), and the cost of the disease is astronomical -- not just in medication, talk therapy and hospitalization, but in the countless lost days of work, destroyed relationships and lives lost to suicide. So it's certainly noble that the folks behind the Intimacy & Depression workshop want to break the taboos about the subject, help families cope with depression and teach sufferers how to treat their disease. And the experts onstage proffered some worthwhile material. But the program is saddled with distasteful elements. Beyond the celebrity presence, the concept, funding and expensive-looking literature for the Intimacy & Depression program came from pharmaceutical giant Glaxo Wellcome, creators of an antidepressant drug called Wellbutrin that has become increasingly popular. It was Glaxo that conceived the Intimacy & Depression program, and it was Glaxo that invited the organizations to get involved. Glaxo's own involvement was modestly revealed via a minuscule "sponsored by Glaxo Wellcome" at the bottom of the literature. A theme in these events is antidepressants -- not surprising, since a large proportion of clinically depressed adults end up on antidepressants -- and how they can both help you out and mess you up even further. Both the program literature and the panelists repeatedly stressed that many antidepressants can inhibit sexual desire and orgasm, putting even deeper rifts in relationships (hey, the panel is called "Intimacy & Depression," right?). As the panelists also carefully explained, one solution to the antidepressants that destroy your sex life are the new antidepressants that don't have a negative effect. What antidepressant medicine might that be? Why, Wellbutrin, of course. A cynic might assume that Glaxo put the event together to push Wellbutrin. The psychiatrists onstage didn't mention Wellbutrin until asked for names, but Glaxo's relationship to the event certainly raises questions about its intentions. Regardless of whether Wellbutrin is pushed by name, getting the word out about depression is likely to provoke more potential customers to run to their therapists. National DMDA executive director Lydia Lewis is quick to stress that the panel wasn't endorsing any one particular medication. Says Lewis, "I think you heard Dr. Pinsky make the point that we don't endorse any treatment of any sort ... People are not going to just switch medications because they come to a thing and hear the name of a drug." As she explains it, they simply want to help sick people to get some help. And with celebrities at the front of this series, and Glaxo Wellcome at the back, it's hard not to feel sympathy for the genuine experts -- the National DMDA and the AAMFT -- who want this to be a serious discussion, or for the depressives who come wanting real advice and find themselves sitting next to a rabid "Party of Five" fan. (A questionnaire stuffed into the literature asked attendees, "What's your reason for coming to tonight's event?" We can only guess how many checked off "To see the 'Party of Five' celebrities.") As Paula Devicq pointed out during her introduction at last week's Intimacy & Depression workshop in San Francisco, "As actors, the line between reality and fiction can become unclear ... so you can imagine the advice I got when those shows aired. People would come up and say to me, 'Snap out of it, can't you see Charlie loves you?'" (Obsessive alt.tv.party-of-five discussions cover similar ground.) That line between fact and fiction -- a border that some fans seem to not quite comprehend -- is one that for years has been exploited by marketers who pay celebrities exorbitant prices to play "expert." Al from "Home Improvement" (Richard Karn), for example, attends county fairs on behalf of Orchard Supply Hardware, offering tips on how to perfectly plane a two-by-four. His credentials for this, beyond his TV fame, seem to be that he was once an "apartment manager specializing in odd jobs." But heading up a discussion about depression therapy is a whole other ball game than hawking nails. Does it really take famous names and a sponsor with a not-so-hidden agenda to put together a serious discussion about a serious issue? Imagine workshops about neurosis that use "Seinfeld" episodes as a text, addiction help sessions in which the cast of "Beverly Hills 90210" dispenses advice, single-mother support groups in which "Murphy Brown" scripts are read for inspiration. The potential is frightening. As Lewis puts it, "The reality is that sometimes you've got to have some sizzle to get your message across. If this just had been a bunch of psychiatrists on stage, who knows?"
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