Fathers Suffer Postnatal Depression? Or Another Target for Drugs?

by Heidi Stevenson

19 May 2010

In the mass move to medicalize every facet of life, a medical school has gone in search of evidence that new fathers suffer from depression. Can anyone be surprised that they found it? Or that the recommended course of action is to drive these men into treatment?

James Paulson, Ph.D. is the lead author. He stated

This may increase our capacity for early identification of parental depression, add leverage for prevention and treatment, and increase the understanding of how parental depression conveys risk to infants and young children.

How is it that medicine even believes it has any place in the normal ups and downs of life? Isn't it obvious that becoming a new father isn't all peaches and cream? That the stresses, like interrupted sleep and concerns about being responsible for a new person's life are simply difficult?

Does it never enter the heads of these "researchers" that depression might be a natural response to difficult circumstances? Most people labeled with depression are simply responding to difficult situations in their lives. In most cases, depression is nothing more than nature's way of making us sit back and pay attention. We become tired and listless. Depression makes us reassess and address our problems.

Depression, in most cases, is a normal and healthy response. It serves to inform us that we're going about things wrong and need to make adjustments.

Modern medicine, though, seeks to slap a label on people it can define as "suffering from depression". Then, its next step is to cram pills down our throats with claims they will fix the problem—though they don't. They base this nonsense on a fraudulent claim that depression is a chemical imbalance, though it's never been shown to be the case.

But, Hey! Why mess up a good thing? There's big money in producing and packaging chemicals as correctives for a nonexistent imbalance in brain chemistry. Doctors rake in the moolah with every visit with a patient who accepts the diagnosis of depression, and they keep coming back. There's nothing better for business than repeat customers.

Never mind that these drugs are addictive. Never mind that they damage the brain. What's that matter in the face of all the dough that can be made?

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