As for the first part of the question, I don't know. I can hazard a few guesses. I can say for sure that I am fascinated by the phenomenal interest in the autobiographical form. Perhaps the public interest in this form has something to do with a collective sense that we are, as a culture, becoming increasingly less direct and honest, that we are ever more image-driven, that we know the media to distort and even lie, that we know our figureheads to distort and even lie. In response, we want something solid, we want a real glimpse into real lives, and thus we grasp these books.
Real life is difficult, and difficulty leads to dysfunction.
It's not the dysfunction we're after. It's the sense of truth, of authenticity. We all know someone who is on Prozac, or think about going on it ourselves, or see it seep into our communities in ways both alarming and amusing. Prozac, for these reasons alone, is a remarkable drug. It is perhaps the only drug to have seeped so far out of its plastic shell, to have been absorbed by the bloodstreams of so very many, even those who have never had any tactile relationship with it.