Assessing the impact of SSRI antidepressants on popular notions of women's depressive illness

This study examines how Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants have played a contributing role in expanding categories of women's "mental illness" in relation to categories of "normal" behavior. We hypothesized that between 1985 and 2000, as Premenopausal Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD), postpartum depression, and perimenopausal depression were increasingly treated with SSRIs, popular categories of depressive illness expanded to encompass what were previously considered normative women's life events such as motherhood, menstruation, or child birth. We quantified and qualified this expansion through an in-depth analysis of popular representations of depressive illness during the time period when SSRIs were introduced. Using established coding methods, we analyzed popular articles about depression from a mix of American magazines and newspapers spanning the years 1985-2000. Through this approach, we uncovered a widening set of gender-specific criteria outside of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual criteria for dysthymic or depressive disorders that have, over time, been conceived as indicative of treatment with SSRIs. Our results suggest that SSRI discourse may have helped shift popular categories of "normal/acceptable" and "pathological/treatable" womanhood, in much the same way that the popularity of Ritalin has shifted these categories for childhood.