It’s Not Just a Chemical Imbalance

Thinking of my mental illness as preordained missed many of the causes of — and solutions to — my emotional suffering.
By Kelli María Korducki

The antidepressant Prozac came on the market in 1986; coincidentally, it was the year I was born. By the time I saw my first psychiatrist, as an early-2000s teenager, another half-dozenantidepressants belonging to the same class of drugs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or S.S.R.I.s, had joined it on the market — and in the public consciousness.

The despondent cartoon blob from a memorable series of TV ads for the S.S.R.I. drug Zoloft became a near-instant piece of pop culture iconography after its May 2001 debut. It was commonplace through much of my childhood to find ads for other S.S.R.I.s tucked into the pages of the women’s magazines I’d leaf through at the salon where my mother had her hair cut, outlining criteria for determining whether Paxil “may be right for you.” In my depressed, anxious, eating disordered adolescence, I knew by name the pills that promised to help me.

The mainstreaming of S.S.R.I.s and other psychopharmaceuticals didn’t eradicate stigmas against mental illness, but it certainly normalized a sense of their prevalence. (A 2003 study concluded that child and adolescent psychotropic prescription rates alone had nearly tripled since the late 1980s.) It also shaped the tone of conversation...

I also make it a daily priority to get at least some light exercise, whether a walk or a jog or a bicycle commute. I maintain a regular yoga practice, try to eat a balanced diet and get enough sleep, read constantly, and work to nurture social connections and build community. All of these, I’ve learned, I can do to maintain my emotional and psychological well-being, and the key word here is “maintain.” It’s about process, not prognosis...

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Medical intelligence-Sam Harris & Eric Topol

New Podcast Medical Intelligence:  A Conversation with Eric Topol

In this episode of the Making Sense podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Eric Topol about the way artificial intelligence can improve medicine. They talk about soaring medical costs and declining health outcomes in the U.S., the problems of too little and too much medicine, the culture of medicine, the travesty of electronic health records, the current status of AI in medicine, the promise of further breakthroughs, possible downsides of relying on AI in medicine, and other topics. Eric Topol, MD, is a world-renowned cardiologist, Executive Vice-President of Scripps Research, the founder of a new medical school and one of the top ten most cited medical researchers. He is the author of The Patient Will See You Now, The Creative Destruction of Medicine, and Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again. Listen Now →

Why we need to fight misinformation about vaccines

Ethan Lindenberger never got vaccinated as a kid. So one day, he went on Reddit and asked a simple question: "Where do I go to get vaccinated?" The post went viral, landing Lindenberger in the middle of a heated debate about vaccination and, ultimately, in front of a US Senate committee. Less than a year later, the high school senior reports back on his unexpected time in the spotlight and a new movement he's leading to fight misinformation and advocate for scientific truth.

To start, I want to share with you guys something about my hometown of Norwalk, Ohio. Now, as this video stated, I am from Norwalk, which is an extremely small town, about 15,000 people. And really, in Norwalk, if you want to do something fun, you go to Walmart or drive half an hour to something more interesting. And for Norwalk, I've lived there for my entire life, I'm a senior at the local public high school, and you know, it's something to where I really enjoy my small town. And I'm just a normal kid, you know, I lead debate clubs, I volunteer at my church. 

And back in November of 2018, I made a small Reddit post asking for advice on an issue that I was encountering that I needed some clarification on. And this issue, as was stated in the introduction, was something towards vaccinations and how I was not immunized against various diseases, including polio and measles, as well as influenza, HPV, hepatitis -- the standard vaccine someone my age would receive. Now, this question I asked was simple and pretty strange, because, you know, I wanted to get vaccinated. That's kind of weird, but it happened, and then this turned into a public story, because I wanted to get vaccinated. So that was kind of strange, and then it blew up more, and I was doing interviews and talking to more people, and again, I'm a normal kid, I'm not a scientist, I don't lead a non-profit, I am a pretty casual person, I'm wearing a hoodie. 

(Laughter) 

Because of this question and this story, because I wanted to get vaccinated and this interesting situation I was in, I saw that I quickly was in this public setting of an extremely important controversy and discussion taking place. Now, I saw that the stories and headlines were pretty accurate for most part, you know, "After defying anti-vax mom, Ohio teen expresses why he got vaccinated." Pretty accurate, pretty true. And, as stated, I testified in front of a Senate committee, so there, they said, "This teen who self-vaccinated just ripped his mom's anti-vaxer beliefs in front of Congress." OK, I didn't really do that, but that's fine. And certain news outlets took it a little further. "'God knows how I'm still alive': Teenager, 18, finally gets vaccinated and attacks his anti-vax parents." 

So I did not attack my parents, that's not accurate at all... (continues)

This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.