Here’s another link to the segment on antidepressants.
(And don’t worry — Laura won’t be posting anymore links after this.)

OK, so here’s the link to the long segment on anti-depressants in which Laura appears for 4-5 seconds… She’s not sure how long this link is good for but it’ll probably work for a day or so…TODAY link

While Laura was at the pool at her parents’ condo today watching Ben swim, one of the nice ladies mentioned that she’d seen Laura today on TODAY. Laura was surprised, since, obviously, she had told everyone it would be on yesterday, which is what the TODAY producer had told her and it wasn’t. So she’s now trying to see if there’s a link to the segment on the msnbc.com website. If there is she’ll post it right here on the brant.

Well, for those of you who taped, TiVOed, or actually watched the TODAY show today, the segment didn’t air. I’m not sure when it will air but I’ll post a new date when I get it….Sorry for the confusion!

So, about a week after the piece on anti-depressants ran in the Washington Post, a producer from the TODAY show called. They were putting together a piece on depression, he said, and wanted to include Laura in it. When the producer, a very nice guy who Laura assumes is half her age, gingerly asked her if she minded making her story public, Laura shook her head, even though he couldn’t see her. No problem, she reassured him. I’m very open about things like this.

Obviously! I mean, Laura had only announced to the world FOUR WHOLE TIMES that she loves her meds — once on The Huffington Post even though no one read it; once on her brant, where she posted the piece in its entirety since no one read it while it was on the Huffington Post; once in the Washington Post, and now once again on her brant! It was one of those questions that Laura realized she should eventually give some serious thought to — more thought, that is, than she could give it that moment on the telephone during the pre-interview.

“Exhibitionistic depressive personality disorder” (for those of you who just ran to your dog-earred DSMs [Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals], EDPD isn’t in there because Laura just made it up) or no exhibitionistic depressive personality disorder, Laura hung up the phone and wondered whether she should mind being so public about her thoughts and feelings. But Laura just couldn’t muster up the self-consciousness to decline the interview, so they made arrangements for her interview.

A few days later, after some emergency grooming (hair color), a local crew came to the house and set up their lights and their sound equipment in Laura’s kitchen/dining room area (they’re kind of combined, which you’ll see if they actually use the footage they shot). When it was time to start the taping, Laura was instructed by the producer/cameraman to look at him when answering the questions that were going to come out of the speaker phone to her left, and she didn’t think it was going to be as hard as it was. But it was really weird for her to talk at this really nice complete stranger with a head set on and not look at the phone.

They taped for about fifteen minutes and then Laura was told they wanted to get some b-roll. Laura offered to take her medication if they wanted to film her doing that (a joke, which luckily the guy in her kitchen, his colleague, and the producer in New York, thought was funny). However, they did want to get her looking, you know, suitably depressed, so she sat in one of her giant black wicker chairs in her sun room while they went into the yard and filmed her through the windows. The fact that it was grey and rainy and depressing really added to the moment that depicted Laura typing away on her ibook, pretending to be depressed.

Last week, Laura’s piece on anti-depressants ran on the front page of the Health section of the Washington Post. The piece was basically the “Happy 10th Anniversary, Anti-depressants” that appeared on the Huffington Post for about 5 minutes two months ago. Anyway, Laura sent it to someone she used to know at the Washington Post Op-Ed page, who just happens to now be the editor of the Health section, and, after one thing led to another, the piece appeared.

Laura was really blown away because there were lots of terrific comments posted on the Washington Post’s website about the piece and then the Health section forwarded a whole bunch of comments and questions from readers which she’s almost finished responding to.