synopsis:

'Prozac Nation' is about the journey of elizabeth through depression and back, emerging at the other end, alive, but only just to tell the tale. A tale of being bounced between innumerable doctors/psychiatrists and spending the better part of her life doped up on Prozac and lithium.

The books starts somewhere near the end of Elizabeth's battle, before jumping back to her early childhood, and following her through her life, the preconceived ideas and misconception about other peoples' thoughts on depression, how others don't know how to treat her just because she is depressed are both addressed.

Elizabeth refers to her depression as a disease, almost like it is something that you can catch. As her depression starts to take control of her life, in effect controlling her thoughts and actions, she is hitting rock bottom as a wave of blackness washes over her. It is almost as if her depression is acting as a barrier between her and the world around her, distancing her from it. She knows her depression. She has never been without her depression. Her depression is her most intimate relationship.

on this book:

elizabeth wurtzel has been compared to Sylvia Plath many times, and when she first released 'Prozac Nation' she was unprepared for the flood of reaction that lapped at her feet. While critics termed her book "controversial", victims of depression thanked her for her brutally honesty and harrowing insight into the literary depths of despair that she had penned.since wurtzel published 'prozac nation', it has sent waves through the mental health community as well as the "sane" readers of the book. Most people do not fully understand what it is like to be depressed, unless they had suffered from depression themselves. Through 'Prozac Nation', Wurtzel became a role model for young women. She tells what it is like to be depressed, suffer from addiction, to be the child of a single parent, who rarely saw her father, and live through a suicide attempt.in 2001 a film based on this novel came out.