In 1993 psychiatrist Peter D. Kramer wrote the bestselling book Listening to Prozac. In this Fresh Air interview from that year, Dr. Kramer discusses some of the cases and ideas from that book. Published at a time when Prozac was quite new (it entered medical use in the late 1980s), there was great optimism around the drug's ability to treat depression and its potential use to improve mood and personality. Kramer tells of the ethical dilemmas of prescribing it to patients who aren't depressed and giving them the ability to feel "better than well" as one patient described it.
While Prozac is still widely prescribed today in the United States with over 20 million prescriptions per year, it hasn't quite proved to be the panacea for major depression that people were hoping for. Even though it helps a great many people, the "chemical imbalance" theory has not proven correct and Prozac and other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) can come with side effects, which are briefly addressed in this interview. This is still an informative interview from a time when Prozac was a new and exciting development in psychiatry and treating mental illness.