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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 7, 1998)
®regonf$K£meral& NEWSROOM (541)346-5511 E-MAIL ode@oregon. uoregon.edu ON-UNE EDITION: www.uoregon.edu/~ode EDITOR IN CHIEF Ryan Frank EDITORIAL EDITORS Jonas Allen, Kameron Cole Happiness in a Bottle Mo Doctor NEEbEP, ^tST Pop A Prozac W«w LtFE ^ CfETS AL.TTLzbuLL. ^ Giovanni SaJimena Drug company’s ad campaign nudges us ever closer toward becoming a Prozac nation America, the land of the free and the home of the consumers. If you have a problem, we have a product that can fix it — or at least make you feel better for a little while. You don't feel manly enough? Buy a Ford. You don’t feel sexy? Try this new shade of lip suck. Money, power, love and securi ty can all be pur chased with your Visa or Mastercard. This consumerism nas now moved into un charted territory: mental health. Eli Lily, a pharmaceutical company, has recently taken out two full-page ads in more than 20 national maga zines to tout the virtues of Prozac. Who needs years of counseling when you can take a little pill that will do it all? After all, Prozac is just another product, right? Wrong. Prozac is a psychoactive prescription drug that is used to treat mental illness. Unfortunately, doctors can get Prozac for their patients without even consulting a psychiatrist. The symp toms of clinical depression, which is one of the most common uses for an tidepressants, are vague and some times cannot be distinguished from the kind of depression everyone feels from time to time. This has led to an overprescribing of antidepressants. Twenty-eight million Americans were on antidepressants in 1996, although the American Psychiatric Association reports that at any point in time there are only 16 million adults who suffer from disorders that require antide pressants. And Eli Lily’s ads for Prozac are only making the problem worse. In stead of targeting doctors in their ads, which is the practice of almost all pre scription drug companies, Lily entices consumers to do a self-diagnosis with the following line: Feeling depressed? If the answer is yes, then Lily claims Prozac can help. Lily pharmaceutical company is trying to create a consumer market for its prescription product. And why not? Antidepressants are big business. According to a recent article in Insight on the News, consumers already spend approximately $5.5 billion a year on antidepressants such as Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil. The problem with marketing antidepressants is that there is a fixed market: Those who have been diagnosed with de pression. Therefore, when companies such as Lily suggest to the general population that “Prozac can help,” many consumers may end up trying to solve their problems with a pill. In addition, Eli Lily is securing a fu ture generation of users for its product by targeting kids with a peppermint flavored Prozac. According to a recent Opinion Stephanie Knowlton article in U.S. News Online, 580,000 American kids as young as one are on antidepressants, even though the Food and Drug Administration is still in the process of evaluating the ef fects of antidepres sants on children. What would it be like to grow up on Prozac? Children would have no point of reference to understand what normal feels like and would learn nothing of coping skills. What would stop parents from seeking Prozac for their children as a means of making parenting more manageable or smoothing over some rough edges? After all, kids on Prozac could be a lot easier to deal with. Maybe everyone would be easier to deal with on Prozac. Depression is a real disorder that re quires psychiatric attention and pos sibly medication. Eli Lily’s ads are simply trivializing mental illness to promote their product. The message is simple: if you are unhappy with your looks, status, in come or even your moods, we have the ultimate product. Try Prozac. It may not make you prettier, richer or more liked, but you will feel better anyway. Stefanie Knowlton is a columnist for the Emerald. Her views do not necessarily represent those of the newspaper. I THINK bad CONDUCT frankiy, is ENOUGM for’ IAAPEACMMENT...
