Bitter Pills

Immediately before her encounter with psychiatry, Rebekah Beddoe was a normal girl having a rough trot. By the time of her inspired decision three years later to take herself off her medications, she'd been diagnosed with five separate mental disorders and drugged to within an inch of her life. Heavy doses of an antipsychotic have left her a diabetic and her left arm is a canvas of self-inflicted scars. Somehow, her family remains intact. She married Jemima's father, Nigel, in the midst of her trials and the three of them are going strong. She can find it in her to give the SSRIs their due. People have told her these drugs "pulled them out of the depths of despair," she says, "by what mechanism, I don't know, but it's undeniable they believe this." What she can't stand is the nonchalance with which they're distributed. "People go for help when they're at their most vulnerable," she says. "They're confused and don't trust their own judgment. If they knew the doctor was going to prescribe a drug that has the propensity to induce exactly the feelings they're trying to avoid, they'd run screaming from it."