A Christian Perspective on Antidepressants

Christian Medical & Dental Associations® ^ | September 10, 2020 | Jennifer Huang Harris, MD

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The brain is one of the mysteries of creation that we are only just starting to understand through science and medicine. As more knowledge about the mechanisms of the brain is uncovered, researchers are also constantly revising their theories about how it works. As we discussed in Chapter 3, an early theory was that depression was caused by a neurotransmitter deficiency in the brain.

But science has moved ahead to understanding the brain as functioning primarily through connections between neurons, through how the brain gets wired and rewired, in a process called neuroplasticity. The brain is constantly changing and adapting, strengthening the pathways used to make them more efficient and removing the pathways we no longer use.

…Understanding how antidepressants work is important. Antidepressants do not work, as was once popularly thought, by fixing a chemical imbalance. In our experience, this misconception has led to many fears about taking antidepressants, such as that they will change a person’s personality or that a person will become dependent on the medication. Rather, recent research suggests antidepressants work by two mechanisms. The first is by increasing BDNF in the brain, which enhances neuroplasticity and can counter the atrophy that occurs with depression. This process takes weeks to occur.

Antidepressants work through a second more immediate mechanism by altering the black tinted lenses by which depressed people experience the world and recall events. Depressed people have a negative bias—they tend to pay attention to and remember only negative information, and they disregard positive information. This bias can be addressed through therapy (which we describe in the next chapter) and can be helped by antidepressants. Several studies have shown that after just one dose of an antidepressant, people are more attentive to faces with positivei facial expressions, not just to faces with negative expressions…

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I notice that such people who demand you act joyful all the time are church-lady Martha types. The Lord rebuked Martha for good reason.

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