1960s, early

Michael Shepherd’s (Maudsley) epidemiological studies of psychiatric morbidity in primary care finds depressive disorders extraordinarily common and frequently undiagnosed. Only in late 70s, as “storm clouds gathered over the benzodiazepines,” did pharmaceutical companies become interested in detection and long-term treatment of depression in primary care: “The availability of this research probably played a significant part in company decisions to proceed with the development of SSRIs like Prozac when there was little evidence that they were any more efficacious than the older generation of compounds” (Healy, 229).