Over lunch today I was thinking about a story that aired on the news last night about how some antidepressants were causing suicidal tendencies in some teens. They did an interview at length with a girl who was wearing a black t-shirt that said "Talk Nerdy To Me" across the chest. I was a little surprised that they didn’t blur it as is usually the case these days with logos and provocative statements on clothing.
The thing that left the greatest impression though was the fact that there really wasn’t anything wrong with the girl. She came off as intelligent with all of the sort of nerd girl quirkiness. She had had some problems with drugs, but aside from that, she didn’t seem to have any real need for medication. (She kinda reminded me of the nerd girl from Real Genius, plays drums too!) Indeed, she indicated that the prescribed drugs put her in a worse state than the illegal drugs.
I wonder, have we reached a state when everything and anything is to be medicated, especially people who don’t comform to what mainstream society expects? It sure seems that way. While companies ship thousands of IT jobs overseas and complain about how they can’t find good people here in the U.S., we drug up the quirky people who come up with most of the innovations that have built our technological society. This cannot end well.