As Susan Schutz said, “It is often difficult for those who are lucky enough to have never experienced what true depression is to imagine a life of complete hopelessness, emptiness, and fear.” Depression is defined as the result of an imbalance in the chemical combination in your brain (Robertson) and is one of the most pressing ethical issues in our society today. People turn to many things to fill the void that depression causes in their lives. One of the major things people turn to is antidepressants. Antidepressants are used to treat and reduce some of the symptoms that come with depression. While they do not heal the depression completely, they can give a patient temporary relief from their symptoms. While antidepressants work for some …show more content…
One of the major issues surrounding the treatment of depression with antidepressants is suicide. The Food and Drug Administration recently required the addition of warnings of heightened suicidal thoughts or behavior in people under the age of twenty- five to the boxes of antidepressant medications. This expanded the window of increased risk from children and adolescents all the way to twenty- five year olds (Carey). Seeing this warning on the medication understandably raises concern amongst the patient and the patient’s family as they do not want a medication to be the result of their family member’s death. The patients have already suffered enough hurt as a result of their depression, and they should not have to suffer more due the side effects of a medication taken to prevent the disease. As with every medication, there are two sides to the controversy. When researchers looked at and directly compared the rates of prescribed antidepressants with rates of suicide, the results indicate that the more antidepressants are prescribed, suicide rates go down (Rosack). Some people believe that no treatment leads to more suicides than treatment with antidepressants, and that people killed themselves as a result of untreated depression more than they killed themselves as a result of the medication. When taking antidepressants, the patient should think carefully about the side effects and assure themselves that it is something they are willing to