Furious Seasons

August 17, 2009

John Hughes' Films A Window Into Pre-Medicated America

A wonderful column appeared in the Los Angeles Times last week in the wake of film director/producer John Hughes' death earlier this month and basically made the point that all those supposedly sad, depressed or wild and wacky teens in his films were in fact pretty much treated as normal by Hughes. But he was making these films largely in the 1980s before the mid-1990s when teen angst and rebelliousness were turned into mental disorders and a cottage industry for Big Pharma. Ah, yes, the days of teen innocence now lost.

Anyway, the columnist pretty much goes for it:

"If the brooding, solitary Andie played by Ringwald in "Pretty in Pink" were in high school in 2009, it's hard to imagine she wouldn't be a candidate for anti-depression therapy. Likewise, if "The Breakfast Club," which is about five teens serving time in Saturday detention, took place in a post-Prozac, post-Columbine America, Ally Sheedy's mostly mute, kleptomaniac misfit would have undoubtedly been medicated, and Anthony Michael Hall's character would have received a lot more than detention for bringing a flare gun to school. As for Ferris Bueller, the kid obviously needed Ritalin.
"I'm not suggesting that any of us were better off when legitimate disorders went unrecognized and untreated. But in a culture in which diagnoses sometimes seem to get handed out like conservation-awareness fliers in front of the supermarket, it's worth asking ourselves if old-fashioned eccentricity -- of the teen or adult variety -- can too easily be supplanted by the ease of assigning a code from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Hughes, who left the movie business in the early 1990s because he feared the impact Hollywood would have on his children, should be remembered not just for the way he appreciated weirdness but for the way he normalized it -- not with pills but with paisley."

I couldn't agree more. Outside of the realms of psychosis and suicidal behavior (and, hell, maybe not even there, the skeptic in me sometimes says), it's sometimes best to let human nature be human nature. Can you imagine Matthew Broderick on Ritalin? I sure can't.

I'm a generational compadre of Hughes' characters and I can assure you all that I had never heard of a kid or teen being given psychotropics of any kind until the early-1990s when I worked at a middle school and had to go take a 14-year-old to the nurse's office so he could get his Prozac. Nice kid, too.

Ironically enough, there's now pretty solid research establishing that much of the response to anti-depressants among kids and teens is in fact a placebo effect in many cases and there's also solid research establishing that anti-depressants increase the risk of suicidal ideation in kids and teens.

You'd think that would argue for some caution--and perhaps some conservatism--in how we are treating teenage wasteland these days.

Posted by Philip Dawdy at August 17, 2009 12:05 AM

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"Ella Marigby
Picks up the rice in the church where her wedding has been;
Lives in a dream.
Waits at the window,
Wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door.
Who is it for?
All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
All the lonely people, where do they all belong?"
The Beatles.

Today they all belong on chemicals.

Posted by: mark p.s.2 at August 17, 2009 07:23 AM

I was taking psych meds when I was 7 years old. I remember being told that I should have been put on something when I was 3. Then told that maybe I shouldn't have been put on them. Lots of young kids have been put on psych meds since the late 80s and early 90s and now everything is being medicated.

Posted by: Princess at August 17, 2009 08:07 AM

Interesting article. It's weird that in a society where the trend is to increase tolerance over time (think of the gains that the gay rights community have achieved) that in this one sector we seem to be increasingly INtolerant.

Posted by: Francesca Allan at August 17, 2009 11:06 AM

Good Article. in my generation, kids just wore glasses, braces, and one poor kid i knew had to go to the nurse because he had juvenile
diabetes.

When I was depressed, my parents were advised to get me involved with extra curricular activities.

And one of the funniest movies i have ever seen has to be "Planes, Trains and Automobiles".

RIP John Hughes.

Posted by: susan at August 17, 2009 04:50 PM

So when your 14 year old boy sits unmoving on the ice cold hard bath room floor and cries and refuses point blank to go to high school yet can give no reason apart from it is hard to get to sleep?

When he can't bring himself to sign up for _any_ extramural activities.

When if you don't force him to school he doesn't xbox, or browse the net but curls up in a ball in is bed all day?

What do you do when this goes on day after day for months?

What then wise guys? I don't like feeding him this stuff any more than you... but hell, I really feel for his misery.

Give me a solution for his misery... and I wouldn't even consider these meds.

Posted by: Annie Onimous at August 24, 2009 05:16 PM

Keep in mind that Brian (the character who brought the flaregun to school) was supposed to be suicidal. Just because they were fun to watch for 2 hours doesn't mean they wouldn't have gone home and shot themselves in real life.

I liked the Breakfast Club as much as anyone (heck, I even played Allison in our school's drama club production :)), but these are fictional characters we see a brief snippet of. Why assume they were all a.o.k. when the movie ended?

Just because normal kids get mopey doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of mentally ill minors for whom no amount of pushing them into clubs or sports will help. There seems to be a lot of confusion when it comes to discerning the difference between occasional sadness when things don't go the way we want and the crushing torment of depression.

Personally, I think the key to preventing over- or under-medication is to require that all patients prescribed psychiatric meds see a psychopharmacologist. We wouldn't go to a podiatrist for a tubal ligation, right? Why should we go to a GP or Gynocologist (just two I'm aware of that are known to prescribe anti-depressants and what not) to have our mental state adjusted?

Posted by: ratgirl at August 24, 2009 08:38 PM

ratgirl,
And do you know of any psychopharmacologist who would ever say "Gee, you don't need any medication?" I don't. The people I've known who saw that kind of specialist were on the same drug cocktails as everyone else. The shuffle might have been a bit more targeted, but I sure didn't see anyone saying "Wow, I feel SO much better! I can get on with my life now."

Personally, I think if you see a surgeon you'll be far more likely to receive a recommendation of (surprise) surgery. See a psychopharmacologist and you'll get drugs. It's possible you might be able to get your knickers untwisted a bit if you've been placed on a drug cocktail by one of the many witless wonders with a prescription pad. But I don't see any psychopharmacologist seriously working to detox anyone from all meds.

Posted by: Sherry at August 25, 2009 06:31 AM