A Facebook friend posted a link to the following article, which talks about the theory that anti-depressants not only don't cure depression, but make it worse by altering brain chemistry in negative and sometimes long-lasting ways:

The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why?

Not surprising, many responses to the article were from folks who were attached to the belief that they needed psychiatric "rescue" by drugs. I posted a reply (admittedly, sometimes I waste too much time debating on Facebook), but thought it might be good to share here on my blog. Given that anti-depressants may make you depressed for life, can you afford to take the risk of using them? Wouldn't it be good to know that there is another way?

Here is my Facebook response:

Megan Meier was a 13-year-old girl who killed herself after being tricked by a fake MySpace boyfriend named "Josh." Josh, it turns out, was actually the parents of neighborhood child, playing a sadistic joke on the girl. Now Megan's parents are trying to push through measures to protect children online.

It's far too easy to blame MySpace for a child's suicide, since it's a new medium and an easy target for anger and frustration. But the fact is, kids have had to go through humiliation, rejection, and pain for a long time before MySpace ever existed. Megan could have just as easily been treated cruelly at school.

So why focus on MySpace? Could it be that the parents don't want to look at themselves and how they were managing Megan's depression? (Could they be in denial about their own role in creating her depression in the first place?)