Antidepressants to treat grief? Psychiatry panelists with ties to drug industry say yes

[Speck Tater]

226. I sat at my wife's side as she died.

I've lost many friends and family members over the years.
My grief over my father's death changed my life forever.
My best friend suddenly dropped dead at Thirty.
A close nephew had a stroke at age four.

Grief is a very important part of being human. There's no way in hell I want to medicate away that experience. We need to come to understand how grief is an important part of the human experience, not run away from it.

Sensitivity means being there to hold someone's hand and help them through a painful experience. It does NOT mean giving them a pill so you can turn your back on their inconvenient grief and pretend it doesn't exist.

Medicating grief cheapens it, and to my way of thinking, is very wrong. I earned my grief with a lifetime of loving and caring. I'm damn well going to make that grief a part of my development as a human being. God knows I paid a high enough price for it that I won't throw it away or let it go to waste.

My grief made me a better person by making me more able to understand other people's grief. If I had skipped over that inconvenience by medicating it away I would have lost out on that and I would not be as compassionate a person as I am today. (Even though you, who don't even know me, seem confident in declaring that I am uncaring.)