Neurotic Neuroscience
Zoloft parodies on YouTube such as this one reinvigorate historical tensions between brain-based and psychological explanations of depression.
By the 1970’s the theory had taken hold in psychiatry that some mental illnesses such as schizophrenia were caused by child-parent relationships gone awry. In 1979, an advocacy group known as the National Alliance on Mental Illness was formed by mothers of schizophrenic patients in response and began pushing brain-centric research on mental illness. The pharmaceutical industry quickly became NAMI’s biggest financial backer.
Subsequent massive media campaigns touting neuroscience as a marriage of scientific objectivity and social destigmatization caused family-centric explanations of mental illness to lose ground.
But these psychological explanations of mental distress have not gone away, as demonstrated by a spoof that imagines the Zoloft campaign was targeted at Shakespeare’s Hamlet (still above). “While the cause is unknown, depression may be due to a backstabbing family member,” the tagline reads.
Image: DEPINTO/YouTube
