Depressed Fish

Depressed Fish

I recently came across this quote from an article titled: Advances in How to Think About and Treat Depression.

“A new way to identify medicines that might make it into the clinic is to use fish to screen rapidly through chemicals that act like existing antidepressants. When placed in stressful situations, zebrafish displayed *depression-like behavior, which was reversed when the fish were given Prozac. This finding not only shows that stress can lead to *depression even in fish, it provides a new model to test anti-depressants.” (*notice the bait-and-switch in language from depression-like behavior to the definitive, depression)

This study clearly also supports the practice of flushing medications down the toilet so they can enter the ground water, rivers and streams. Apparently, fish need Prozac too. Have you ever seen a depressed fish? They look all glossy-eyed and green around the gills.

Suicide among depressed fish is way up. Many are knowingly swimming into fisherman’s nets, or taking the bait to get caught. The larger depressed fish, and some fish-like mammals, are even purposefully beaching themselves in large numbers. This has to stop. Now that we know fish display ‘depression-like behavior,’ it would be unethical to deny them anti-depressant drugs.

This begs several hard questions

1. What are the fish depressed about? Global warming? The BP oil spill?…the same stuff as us?

2. What is harder: to diagnose depression in fish, or depression in children as young as 2?

3. If fish are taking anti-depressants, do they still need to see their shrink?

4. Is Prozac alone enough, or should depressed fish also be taking Abilify as an ‘add-on to treat their depression?’

5. If anti-depressant use among Americans has doubled, is there a corresponding increase in use among American fish?

6. If fish suffer from depression, do they also suffer from Erectile Dysfunction? Restless Fin Syndrome? Overactive Bladder?

7. Would Ritalin help young fish do better in their schools?

8. Do fish abuse drugs in the water, or just drink them ‘as-needed’?

9. Where does PETA stand on all of this?

They call this ‘Advances in how to think about and treat depression’! Yikes.

Insanity, garbage science, and kidding aside, if you want the low-down and truth on the treatment of depression and ‘mental illness’ in America, Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker is a must read.

“We cannot trust psychiatry, as a profession. For the past twenty-five years, the psychiatric establishment has told us a false story. It told us that schizophrenia, depression and bipolar illness are known to be brain diseases, even though it can’t direct us to any scientific studies that document this claim. It told us that psychiatric medications fix chemical imbalances in the brain, even though decades of research failed to find this to be true. It told us that Prozac and other second-generation psychotropics were much better and safer than the first generation drugs, even though the clinical studies had shown no such thing. Most important of all, the psychiatric establishment failed to tell us that the drugs worsen long-term outcomes.

Psychiatry told us stories that protected the image of its drugs, and that storytelling has led to harm done on a grand and terrible scale. Four million American adults under the age of sixty-five years old are on SSI or SSDI today because they are disabled by mental illness. One in every fifteen young adults (eighteen to twenty six years old) is functionally impaired by mental illness. Some 250 children and adolescents are added to the SSI rolls daily because of mental illness. The numbers are staggering, and still the epidemic-making machinery rolls on, with two-year olds in our country now being treated (drugged) for bi-polar illness.”