Srta

Blues Clues

Now that antidepressants are as commonly dispensed as Pez, it's easy to forget that most are less than 20 years old. Prozac, the first SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor;these keep the happy chemical serotonin in your brain longer), was launched in 1987, the same year Patrick Swayze swiveled his hips in Dirty Dancing. Now antidepressants are a $12.6 billion business, and90 percent of the prescriptions are for SSRIs, including Lexapro, Paxil, and Zoloft, or for their close cousins, SNRIs (serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors) such as Cymbalta and Effexor.If you're on an SSRI, you've probably skipped a random Saturday or tried life sans Lexapro for a week, just to see if you could thrive without the drug. "Everybody does it either a little or alot," says psychiatrist Eve Wood, M.D., author of 10 Steps to Take Charge of Your Emotional Life "Because everybody would rather not be on medication, and, understandably, no one likes the idea of beingon drugs for the rest of their life."

Whether this is your first or third time battling the big D, you don't need to rely on pharmaceuticals alone. New research shows that combining antidepressantswith cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can have a near-Kryptonite effect on the black dog. CBT is a short-term (just 16 to 20 sessions), no-nonsense approach to therapy with a straightforward goal:to help people unlearn depressive ways of thinking. For example, depressed women tend to catastrophize ("Oh my God, my boss said I need to punch up my presentation -- I'm going to lose my job!") andto attribute setbacks to unfixable flaws ("I always become a stammering, sweaty mess when I speak to more than three coworkers at once"). With cognitive therapy, patients learn that they've beenclinging to a hugely distorted, very unflattering story about themselves that doesn't reflect reality, says Zindel Segal, Ph.D., a leading CBT researcher in Toronto.
A recent 3-year study found that...