In the 1969 book The Will to Meaning, Dr. Frankl discusses his views on using medication to treat “endogenous”, or physically manifested, depression, suggesting that in some situations, medication or even ECT, electroconvulsive therapy, might be warranted.

What holds for diagnosis is true of therapy as well. Therapy, too, must be multidimensionally oriented. There is no a priori objection against “shots and shocks.” In cases of what is called in psychiatry an endogenous depression it is perfectly legitimate and justified to use drugs and, in severe cases, even to apply electroconvulsive treatment. As it happens it was I who developed the first tranquilizing drug on the Continent, before the Anglo-Saxon march to Miltown was started. In exceptional cases I have ordered lobotomies and in some cases even performed such brain surgery myself. It goes without saying that all this does not obviate the need for simultaneous psychotherapy—and logotherapy—since even in such cases we are not merely treating diseases but dealing with human beings.

Thus I cannot share the apprehension of those speakers who at an international meeting said that they were afraid psychiatry might become mechanized and patients might feel depersonalized if we embark on pharmacotherapy.

I have to admit, I find it ironic that he uses the very idea, “mechanized” and “depersonalized” that so my people are feeling from their physicians now.  We live in a world were many of us are struggling to find meaning, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we suffer from endogenous depression.  In a world struggling to find meaning, what can YOU do as an individual to defeat the meaninglessness of existential frustrations before seeking medication or…. electro-shock therapy?