Happy, Functional People

By Matthew Spinks (J#7)
(Health.com)

People who take antidepressants such as Paxil often say they feel less stressed and more outgoing, lively, and confident. Now a new study suggests it's not just because they're less depressed.
In fact, such drugs may alter two key personality traits linked to depression -- neuroticism and extraversion-independently of their effect on depression symptoms.
In the study, people who took Paxil (paroxetine), a selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), had a drop in neuroticism, which is a tendency toward emotional instability and negative mood. They also had an increase in extraversion, which is a tendency toward outgoingness, compared to similarly depressed people taking placebo.
The current research is a "confirmation of what I observed a number of years ago," says psychiatrist Peter D. Kramer, M.D., the author of the landmark 1993 book "Listening to Prozac," which described how patients treated with antidepressants often became more at ease socially and less sensitive to rejection.
"It looks like a lot of what gives people relief is that they're feeling whatever the opposite of neuroticism is," says Kramer, a clinical professor of psychology and human behavior at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. "Getting better very solidly seems to predict a longer period before the next episode. That argues against the notion that these medications are just band-aids [that] get people through."

Although this personality altering drugs may help improve the conditions of those mentally unstable, they still relinquish control of the citizen through anti-psychotic methods, leading to a lack of personal control. It is understandable why these are in circulation, but it does raise the question of how to regulate them-especially in something so common as antidepressants. Regardless of regulation, people are still under control and because of such regulation, these drugs have become new gateways into making a functional, happy society.