The Depression Epidemic

Depression seems to be running amok in the world, but what is really behind this epidemic? Dr. Weil discusses what he thinks is the cause for the increase of both antidepressant prescriptions and the number of diagnosed cases of depression in the United States.

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Video Transcript: The Depression Epidemic

I think there is a good argument to be made that some substantial percentage of the depression epidemic is manufactured by the medical/pharmaceutical industry. I think that industry has successfully convinced many people that ordinary sadness is really a biochemical abnormality in the brain that should be treated with drugs. I don’t know what that percentage is, but let’s say it’s substantial, if we remove that, I think it still leaves us with a great deal of unexplained depression. Why has this increased so much, in say the past 50 years? And it’s happened in all western industrialized countries, but it’s particularly bad in the U.S. So all I can say is that some of it is manufactured and we should be very suspicious of attempts to tell us that ordinary emotional states are pathological. But it is a real question as to why so many people today are depressed.