In The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani characterized Prozac Nation as "by turns wrenching and comical, self-indulgent and self-aware," comparing it with the "raw candor of Joan Didion's essays, the irritating emotional exhibitionism of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and the wry, dark humor of a Bob Dylan song."

While praising Wurtzel's prose style as "sparkling" and "luminescent," Kakutani thought the memoir "would have benefited enormously from some strict editing" and said that its "self-pitying passages make the reader want to shake the author, and remind her that there are far worse fates than growing up during the '70s in New York and going to Harvard.

"[4] Publishers Weekly was ambivalent: "By turns emotionally powerful and tiresomely solipsistic, [Wurtzel's] book straddles the line between an absorbing self-portrait and a coy bid for public attention.

"[5] Writing in New York Magazine, Walter Kirn found that although Prozac Nation had "moments of shapely truth-telling," altogether it was "almost unbearable" and "a work of singular self-absorption.

[8] Kirkus Reviews thought the book to be filled with "narcissistic pride" and concluded, "By alternately belittling and belaboring her depression, Wurtzel loses her credibility: Either she's a brat who won't shape up or she needs the drugs.