A L S O_.T O D A Y

When a school massacre isn't Page 1 news
By Lori Leibovich
Behind the Chicago Sun-Times' decision not to run the Oregon school-shooting story on Page 1

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T A B L E_.T A L K

Is depression a choice? Weigh in on the roots of our discontent in Table Talk's Science and Health area

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R E C E N T L Y

The unauthorized Godzilla
By Matthew Flamm
Two writers confront the mighty media giants and discover that size does matter
(05/20/98)

No irony please -- we're leftists
By James Poniewozik
The American left's disdain for irony and popular appeal ensures its irrelevance
(05/13/98)

R.I.P., Buzz
By Catherine Seipp
The demise of the once-sparkling rag leaves California once again inexplicably bereft of intelligent magazine life
(05/11/98)

Oklahomans to Tom Tomorrow: Your porn is as high as an elephant's eye!
By Dawn MacKeen
An orgy-depicting "This Modern World" comic strip is not OK in Oklahoma
(05/01/98)

No glitz please -- we're British
By Sylvia Brownrigg
The Brits are just too snide to put on a top celebrity-wallow -- as last week's BAFTA Awards, their weak version of the Oscars, proved
(04/30/98)

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The traveling depression road show

"Party of Five" cast members and the doctor from Mars try to cheer America up. Good luck.

BY JANELLE BROWN | Just two years ago, the cast of the prime-time weepfest "Party of Five" underwent a serious bout of depression. When Kirsten (Paula Devicq) was jilted by Charlie (Matthew Fox) as she stood at the altar, and then got caught plagiarizing her thesis, and then came down with cancer, and then watched her parents break up, she sank into a deep depression that sent her to bed for weeks, and poor Charlie just couldn't get her to cheer up.

This, of course, makes Charlie and Kirsten (or Fox and Devicq, if you prefer) qualified to tell their tales at Intimacy & Depression, a roving town hall meeting and educational program about clinical depression that hit New York and San Francisco this month, and may show up soon at your local civic center. Their tragic experience in TV land will teach unhappy people across America how they, too, can learn to deal with depression!

You might argue that Charlie and Kirsten are just actors, that their knowledge of depression is about as deep as the scripts they memorize every week. But that, according to the Intimacy & Depression founders, isn't the point. Actors don't actually need to be experts -- it's enough, as actor Robert Young from "Marcus Welby, M.D." put it during those old commercials, that they play them on TV.

The stated goal of "Intimacy & Depression," which is presented in part by the National Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association (National DMDA) and the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT), is to help depressed adults and their partners learn to live with their disease, and to tell them about the options available to them. The campaign includes a number of town hall meetings with panels of experts (including Fox and Devicq), Q&A sessions, informational packets and an online educational program.

So, if the intention is to pack the place with depressed people who need help, why not entice them there with an up-close look at their favorite prime-time actors?

Of course, the celebrities speaking at last week's Intimacy & Depression workshop in San Francisco went beyond just "Party of Five" members. Also talking shop onstage were Dr. Drew Pinsky and Dr. John Gray -- whose tenuous inclusion seemed based primarily on their doctor credentials.

For those unfamiliar with them, Pinsky is an "addictionologist" best known as the moderator of the MTV advice show "Love Line," in which B-rated celebrities offer platitudes to callers with tales of rape, abuse, addiction, unrequited love and sexual disease. Smarmy Dr. Gray's main claim to fame is the odiously gender-role-affirming book series, "Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus."

Though Dr. Drew (as Pinsky likes to be called) served as a relatively neutral moderator at the event, and Fox and Devicq stayed wisely silent after their initial carefully scripted speeches about the gravity of depression, Gray proceeded to out-talk the four actual experts onstage -- three psychologists and psychiatrists, one of whom suffered from depression, and her social worker husband -- with insights such as, "Women, if your man is depressed, don't hang around: Go shopping."