Prozac Nation (book)

	Prozac Nation
Author	Elizabeth Wurtzel
Country	United States
Language	English
Publisher	Riverhead Trade
Publication date	1994
Pages	384 pages

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This article is about the book. For the film, see Prozac Nation (film).

Prozac Nation (sub-titled Young and Depressed in America: A Memoir), an autobiography published in 1994 and written by Elizabeth Wurtzel, describes the author's experiences with major depression. The book was adapted into an independent film of the same name. The title is a reference to Prozac, the name of an Eli Lilly and Company manufactured antidepressant prescribed for Wurtzel.

[edit] Book

In the book (1997 edition: ISBN 1-57322-512-6), Wurtzel describes her experience with the depths of a mental illness, her own character failings and how she managed to live through particularly difficult periods while completing college and working as a writer.

Her honesty in relating episodes which often do not reflect well on her is a striking aspect of the book. This has polarized many readers and critics, with some denouncing Wurtzel as self-obsessed, indulgent and unlikeable, with others praising her for producing a frank and accessible account of an often stigmatized illness.

As an autobiographical account of experiences with mental illness, it can be seen as the successor to books such as Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Joanne Greenberg's I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. Prozac Nation is also similar to Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted, a book published in the same year: both were written by young women describing their experiences of mental illness. Wurtzel's mental illness is known as atypical depression.