This Teen Was Prescribed 10 Psychiatric Drugs. She’s Not Alone. [nytimes.com.]

Natalie Audage 8/29/224:10 PM

By Matt Richtel, Photo: Annie Flanagan/The New York Times, The New York Times, August 28, 2022

One morning in the fall of 2017, Renae Smith, a high school freshman on Long Island, N.Y., could not get out of bed, overwhelmed at the prospect of going to school. In the following days, her anxiety mounted into despair.

“I should have been happy,” she later wrote. “But I cried, screamed and begged the universe or whatever godly power to take away the pain of a thousand men that was trapped inside my head.”

Intervention for her depression and anxiety came not from the divine but from the pharmaceutical industry. The following spring, a psychiatrist prescribed Prozac. The medication offered a reprieve from her suffering, but the effect dissipated, so she was prescribed an additional antidepressant, Effexor.

[Please click here to read more.]

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