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My dear wife would occasionally hear in her head the voice of a "southern waitress". It was never more than fragments of words and was triggered non-specifically, usually when we were driving somewhere together. (Sort of like Charlie Brown's teacher..."Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...honey!") She came from a home where the father drank in her youth (although he was 31 years dry when she first noticed this odd phenomenon), her mother was a resentful codependent, her brother an intellectual that got out early, and her sister a hypocondriact.

We got some counseling, and over three years or so as we worked out issues on both sides, the voice stopped. I asked the doctor what the heck it meant, and he just shrugged. You know, raised on TV movies, you expect some amazing insight, some brilliant fact that will make it all make sense, and it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes, it is just like RF interference from a computer...you deal with be real causes of the problem, and the symptoms go away.

“Why are so many Americans so gullible, and trusting of physicians???”

More likely the person just wants a pill rather than engage in psychological counseling. And perhaps the insurance companies encourage it. I don’t know how the cost of pills stacks up against the cost of counseling.

My own personal amateur theory is that these pills probably unleash a host of unresolved feelings at one time. Depression isn’t always crying and moaning. Sometimes it is just a feeling of deadness or numbness, that one ought to care but can’t. Things that ought to make one happy, don’t. Things that ought to make one mad also don’t. If an antidepressant pill suddenly makes feelings more intense, then I can see how past incidents might accumulate to the point of explosion. I don’t excuse it but I can see how it might happen that years of resentments and anger coalesce to tempt one to drastic action.

I also firmly believe in demonic possession. It happens more than we like to think and it is sad that modern medicine discounts that possibility. God ought to be consulted as often as medical doctors.