Awards

• Commended for PROSE (Psychology) 2012

Overview

When Katherine Sharpe arrived at her college health center with an age-old complaint, a bad case of homesickness, she received a thoroughly modern response: a twenty-minute appointment and a prescription for Zoloft—a drug she would take for the next ten years. This outcome, once unlikely, is now alarmingly common. Twenty-five years after Prozac entered the marketplace, 10 percent of Americans over the age of six use an SSRI antidepressant. In Coming of Age on Zoloft, Sharpe blends deeply personal writing, thoughtful interviews, and historical context to achieve an unprecedented portrait of the antidepressant generation. She explores questions of identity that arise for people who start medication before they have an adult sense of self. She asks why some individuals find a diagnosis of depression reassuring, while others are threatened by it. She presents, in young people's own words, their intimate and complicated relationships with their medication. And she weighs the cultural implications of America's biomedical approach to moods.

Full Product Details

9780062059734

Table of Contents

Reviews

Sharpe is excellent at detailing the positives and negatives of these drugs ... But she is best at probing broader societal issues ... This is a fine book that nicely weaves together personal, sociological, and philosophical perspectives for a thoughtful view of how antidepressants are shaping many people's lives. -- Publishers Weekly

Author Information

KATHERINE SHARPE's writing has appeared in n+1, GOOD, and Washington Post Magazine, among many other publications. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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