The Worried Well: The Depression Epidemic and the Medicalisation of Our Sorrows

Gail Bell

Mar 2012 · Quarterly Essay Book 18 · Bolinda · Narrated by Marie-Louise Walker

About this audiobook

In the second Quarterly Essay of 2005, Gail Bell investigates Australia's depression epidemic. Why, she wonders, do well over a million Australians now take antidepressant drugs? This is a fresh, frank and independent look at the depression culture and the move to medicalise sadness. Bell examines how the prescription culture operates, scrutinising the role of big drug companies and GPs and talking to those who take - and don't take - the new antidepressants, from anxious students to lonely retirees. She finds that drug companies have invested billions in an effort to simplify a profoundly complex mental condition, and that along the way ordinary problems of living have been transformed into medical conditions. She also finds that we, the consumers, have been happy to get on board: the vocabulary of depression - "serotonin", "bipolar", "genetic predisposition" - rolls off our tongues as if each of us had studied it at medical school. In this freeranging and elegant essay, Bell takes the pulse of Australia's "worried well" and looks at alternative cures for what ails us.

About the author

Gail Bell was born in Sydney in 1950. She graduated from the University of Sydney in pharmacy and education. She has published short stories and articles, and her first full-length work, The Poison Principle, won the NSW Premier's Award for Non-Fiction in 2002.

Marie-Louise Walker has worked extensively in Australian television, film and theatre. She trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and has appeared in stage productions in both the UK and Australia. Her work includes roles in popular outdoor productions including Romeo and Juliet, Alice in Wonderland and Macbeth. Her television work includes roles in The Saddle Club, Blue Heelers, Water Rats and Ocean Girl and she has loved giving voice to books for over 12 years now.