I'm not a doctor, but I used to work for Johnson & Johnson Medical and know quite a bit out this. IMHO there are better SSRI (Selective Serotonin Re-Uptake Inhibitor) medications out there. Prozac was the first, but I can think of Zoloft (sertraline) and Paxil (paroxetine) off the top of my head as being very successful pharmacological treatments. Having said that Prozac has a very successful record of successful treatment of anxiety and depression. Too often the media focuses on people who have had adverse effects to medications, and hardly ever on the many more for whom the medication changed their lives.
What people fail to realize is that there is no "wonder drug" that someone can take that will automatically cure them of anxiety or depression. Illnesses should be treated with a combination of pharmacology and psychology. The medication acts to correct an imbalance in serotonin levels in your brain to get it to a state where the patient feels that they can exert enough willpower to take control of their own destiny. This treatment should be accompanied by some form of therapy to build the patient's confidence and self-belief.
What it is not, is a magic pill that someone can pop that makes them feel better about themselves. I think that a lot of this bad press about Prozac and other psychotropic drugs are the result of these medications being incorrectly prescribed without the appropriate psychological support (or people taking them for the wrong reason).
Just my 2c.
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