US of A and depression

I'm off to the the States tomorrow, weather permitting. Apparently, apart from election-fever there is also 'Prozac-doesn't-work' fever too. Just like here. Well, here's a thing. I had a bout of moderate-to-severe depression a few years ago brought on by some very unpleasant events which I won't go in to here. It absolutely worked for me. Precisely two weeks after I started on it my mood began to lighten. Two weeks is the usual time for an anti-depressant to get to sufficient levels in your body to begin to have an effect. It was as if I had gone from a world in which most things were grey to one in which nearly everything was back in glorious technicolour. The remaining grey bits were tackled with the help of some good talking therapies.

Now it's entirely possible that what happened to me was either the placebo effect, i.e. I believed the pills would make me better so they did, or regression to the mean - that is my illness was naturally self-limiting and I was going to get better anyway and started on the tabbos by coincidence at the same time. However, I think there is enough evidence out there to suggest that Prozac and other anti-d's can and do help lots of people with bad depression. So before you decide to stop taking it - consult your physician, don't believe everything in the papers.