What can be said to such a story? I have worked with the severely mentally ill for many years. I know what "crazy" is like, and I've seen the anguish of the families who watch their loved ones become strangers to them. I have sat in the offices of psychiatrists and seen drug company reps -- young ladies with high heels and short skirts carrying samples and everything from pads of paper to wall clocks advertising their wares -- strut in like peacocks, oblivious to the suffering people sitting around them. I have talked to people who were put on medications that caused their conditions to worsen, who were not believed by whoever was providing their care until it was almost too late.

And yet. And yet. I have met some incredibly brilliant, dedicated, and kind psychiatrists who choose to work for far less money than their specialization is worth because they want to help the poor. I have met dozens and dozens of clients whose lives have been made infinitely better and sometimes even saved by the psychotropic medications they take, including the ones mentioned in this article.

So what to make of a story like this one? Here's what I would suggest:

1. Be an advocate for yourself. Do not go into a doctor's office (any doctor!) and blindly accept his or her diagnosis or prognosis or prescription. Research, but be careful not to believe everything you read on either side of the issue, especially on the internet. For every horror story, there are many many more in between.

2. If you are not pleased with the way your medication is working for you, either get your doctor to help you change or eliminate it, or get a new doctor.

But BUT 3. If you are suffering or your family member is suffering from depression or psychosis or any of the other innumerable psychiatric ailments that can destroy lives, DON'T read this article and conclude that medications are all or always the wrong choice, because sometimes they save lives.

I'm expecting that this thread is going to include a number of posts trashing all medications, especially antidepressants, as unnecessary in the least and harmful at the worst. And there are stories like this one to demonstrate aptly that they are clearly no panacea and should not be taken lightly. However, there are equally harrowing anecdotes I could tell about what happens when families in denial refuse to allow their mentally ill charges to take the medications they need to stop a worsening depression or treat a psychosis spiraling out of control. So I worry every time Salon publishes an article on this topic -- how many people read these articles and read our understandably angry responses and continue in the hell of mental illness because they take an anecdote to be proof positive that there is no help for them?

Please take a read through this, and tell me what you think.

Thank you for sharing this story. I was so pleased to read that you finally found healthcare professionals who listened to you, took a real interest in your son and returned him to you. All the best to all of you.

When I was a freshman in college, I overstressed myself through studying and bad sleep and eating habits. I had a manic episode (bipolar runs in my family) and was hospitalized for a few days. They put me on Abilify, which had just come on the market. I went back to college, thinking that I would be all right, as they had assured me. But after a few days of apparent stability, I started to get worse - not manic this time, but depressed. The medication was putting me into a kind of quiescent state where I never really felt awake and where I always looked exhausted, even though I was sleeping most of the time. When I slept, I had extremely troubling dreams in which I felt like I was constantly being tossed and turned. I was also losing control of my tongue, having increasingly violent facial tics. Eventually it got so bad that I had to go to the emergency room, where thankfully they realized what the psych ward doctors had missed: that the antibiotic I was taking for acne was using the same metabolic pathway as the Abilify, causing it to build up in my system.

I got off the Abilify, and I'd like to say that things got easy right after that, but they didn't. I actually became much more manic than I had been before. It took the doctors a few tries to find a medication that worked for me. Then they put me on Depakote and, in the five years since then, I haven't had any problems.

I suppose atypical antipsychotics shouldn't be banned from the market, as I'm sure they are the best drugs for some people, but their side effects are extremely unpredictable and it takes a few weeks to see how any particular individual is going to react to them. I think they're probably prescribed for too many things relative to the use for which they were initially developed. What scares me the most about your story is the tenacity with which the doctors held to their theories about what was wrong with your son, and their seeming blindness to the possibility that the new symptoms he was manifesting were caused by the medication rather than things which the medication needed to treat.

I'm glad you had the common sense not to listen to them - sometimes we defer excessively to doctors' judgment, forgetting that they too can be fallible, and no one can foresee all possibilities.

The first letter writer said all I would love to say better than I ever could.

What I would like to add is a question. The author describes the different "therapies" which the doctors provided her son. Could the "therapy" have been different meds? I only ask this because the author never makes clear what these therapies are, yet they must be other medications--

My parents--both mentally ill-now deceased- lived before the advent of these new classes of medications. Their lives were wrecked---children in foster care, alcoholism, drug addiction and finally suicide. As an adult I have personally benefited from these drugs as have my child and my sister.

We live full lives--I often wonder what my parents lives would have been like if they had been born at a later time and were able to benefit from these new classes of medications--most importantly though if they didn't have to deal with the shame and stigma of being "crazy"--yeah the sixties weren't too good to the "crazy" people.

Salon--please stop with the over the top headlines---we have come so far--