SSRIs affect the personality, crossing from disease to lifestyle

Evidence

Herman van Praag said it very clearly: “The ssris might be the first generation of drugs that, indeed, affect personality.” Indeed, as Thomas Ban put it: “ssris are forcing us to face the issue of whether the use of psychotropics should be restricted to the treatment of disease or extended to the modification of behaviour, or even to render life more pleasurable.” — Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self, 868

Categorization

• SEED: An angle about the threshold where psychotropics stop being medicine and become lifestyle tools.
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Anxiety of being oneself became weariness of being oneself — Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing…, 621; Dysthymia replaced neurotic depression, opening chemical personality therapy — Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing…, 874; Psychoanalytic complaints now come phrased as economic malaise — Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing…, 905 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• A Tourette’s patient cycled weekly between drug-mediated and disorder selves #exemplifies (0.82) — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded, 4599
• Lifelong antidepressant maintenance is prescribed on intuition, not evidence #expands (0.75) — Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self, 859
• Neoliberal policy privatised stress into individual mental illness #qualifies (0.75) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1601