What Are (and What Are Not) the Existential Implications of Antidepressant Use?

The advent of second-generation antidepressant drugs has brought with it a new debate about the greater social and psychological implications of medication treatment. Many of the concerns raised have been critical of excessive use of antidepressant agents. In this paper I attempt to characterize some of these concerns as existential in nature. Having done so, I attempt to show that such concerns are misapplied and misplaced.