American fashion designer Kenneth Cole recently posted a billboard prominently displayed over Manhattan’s West Side Highway that reads: “Over 40M Americans suffer from mental illness. Some can access care … All can access guns” with hashtags #gunreform and #areyouputtinguson. Once again, an uninformed celebrity type has used his influence to further stigmatize those with mental...

“How much should you push yourself with depression?” a woman asked me the other day. “How do you know what your limits should be?” She wanted to know whether or not she should scale back to part-time work or continue to slog through her full-time job. I hear this question a lot in the depression...

I haven’t read many paragraphs that articulate depression as accurately as this one, in Martha Rhodes’s riveting memoir, 3000 Pulses Later: At that moment, my pain felt equal to—if not even more than—what I imagined any physical illness could pose. The constant anxiety, sadness, fear, and despair strangled me. I felt inexorably alone and as...

When I was six months pregnant, I attended a birthing preparation class with my husband and about twelve other expectant parents. During the fifth session, the instructor asked the mothers whether or not they were going to use medication to get through the pain of childbirth labor. “Everyone who wants to try for a natural...

This post is from my archives. TRIGGER: Please communicate with your doctor if you are considering tapering off of an antidepressant. My depression did not involve psychosis or dangerous manias. Four years ago a good friend of mine put her 10-year-old son on Prozac. He had always suffered from anxiety and anger outbursts, but at...