Like the working mom debate, the antidepressants during pregnancy debate is one of those that hits close to home for me. With my first baby, I was locked on a psych ward weeks after her birth. With my second baby, I took Zoloft throughout my pregnancy. While I'd love to be an expert in cute bunnies and duckies, instead clinically crazy moms are my area of expertise.
Which is why Bruce E. Levine's alternet piece on "Paxil babies" ruffles every last feather I have. Levine managed to take a few nuggets of what we know to be true and make an argument that isn't false, exactly, but does get the wrong end of the stick.
He claims that because SSRI use does increase the incidence of certain birth defects and because there's one case where post-natal SSRIs didn't stop one woman from killing herself, then we should change the entire way that society now operates. Women who want to have children, he argues, should model their communities after traditional African and Chinese family structures where maternal depression is unreported.
Um, OK.
I'll be the first to admit that I don't have the answers, but I do know that there is just something about Levine's approach that won't do dick to change anything. But I'm also not sure that advocacy is his main focus. Or have I gotten the wrong end of the stick, too?
Photo credit: Inky Circus (and for a more level-headed take, read this)
