ABSTRACT
There is a paradox in the coexistence of a large body of critical studies from humanities or even psychiatry about the ubiquitous presence of antidepressant medicine, and at the same of an ever-growing number of people taking these “happy pills”. This might point to some insufficiencies in this critique. After discussing the limits of such a critical perspective, the chapter turns to a much-needed empirical perspective grounded in interviews with young people suffering from depression. It focuses on their approach to and perception of the antidepressant treatment, to argue that they use the medicine as a pragmatic element in their personal identity narrative. This symbolic use of antidepressants should of course be acknowledged by any critical perspective. But questions will still be pending, as the chapter shows in a last part: What kind of identity is promoted by these “initiative pills” that eradicate individual passivity and blur the separation between the normal and the pathological?
