Posted on 08/11/2022 5:13:57 AM PDT by FarCenter
Paris (AFP) – A controversy in the scientific community over a recent claims anti-depressants can be ineffective at treating depression has highlighted the difficulties in understanding mental health conditions.
One of the prevailing theories currently focuses on serotonin. Depression has been linked to a lack of the molecule, which is involved in transmitting emotions to the brain.
Claims that depression has no link to a chemical imbalance in the brain related to serotonin, casting doubt on the need for anti-depressants, have sparked fierce reaction.
A study by psychiatrists Joanna Moncrieff and Mark Horowitz in the journal Molecular Psychiatry in July concluded that there was no proven link between a lack of serotonin and depression.
The authors said it queried the underlying assumption behind the use of anti-depressants, which are mostly developed to alter serotonin levels, undoing a theory that for decades acted as a framework for research.
The study is based on several previous publications, but it quickly attracted criticism -- particularly its presentation by Moncrieff, known for her scepticism towards biological explanations of depression and her radical stance against the pharmaceutical industry.
(Excerpt) Read more at france24.com ...
The serotonin theory of depression: a systematic umbrella review of the evidence
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0
Open Access
Depression is probably not caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain – new study
For three decades, people have been deluged with information suggesting that depression is caused by a “chemical imbalance” in the brain – namely an imbalance of a brain chemical called serotonin. However, our latest research review shows that the evidence does not support it.
Although first proposed in the 1960s, the serotonin theory of depression started to be widely promoted by the pharmaceutical industry in the 1990s in association with its efforts to market a new range of antidepressants, known as selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs. The idea was also endorsed by official institutions such as the American Psychiatric Association, which still tells the public that “differences in certain chemicals in the brain may contribute to symptoms of depression”.
Countless doctors have repeated the message all over the world, in their private surgeries and in the media. People accepted what they were told. And many started taking antidepressants because they believed they had something wrong with their brain that required an antidepressant to put right. In the period of this marketing push, antidepressant use climbed dramatically, and they are now prescribed to one in six of the adult population in England, for example.
Sigmund Freud.
Being prescribed those SSRIs seems to be a common factor with many of the young males males who have done those school shootings. It may be coincidence ( because so many people who seek, or are referred for mental health care are prescribed them), but there might be some causative link as well, from messing with that chemical balance in the brain.
Actually quote by William Gibson
Science is never settled.
Uno vez mas: SCIENCE IS NEVER SETTLED.
Serotonin levels in the brain are connected to depression much like HIV is connected to AIDS.
Many peer reviewed scientists, including Dr. Kary Mullis who invented the PCR test, disagreed with Dr. Fauci’s religious view that HIV causes AIDS. These heretics lost all funding, lost their labs, their careers destroyed, and in the case of Dr. Mullis he “died suddenly” just before the “pandemic“ hit.
I would wager that peer reviewed scientists that disagree with the chemical imbalance in the brain theory will receive the same treatment
Your depression is all in your head.
The pills don’t cure depression. They MIGHT help a person get clarity for a period of time during which he can address his depression. These pills have been given out like candy for the last 20 years. It’s a perfect storm: the Left loves it because groups to which they cater (women and homosexuals) are prescribed these medications quite often; the Right won’t question it because the pills are produced by muh private companies who would never ever sell something that isn’t great.
If The Science is shaky, how did we get to this point?
Thats more likely the cause for 90% of my anxiety/depression.
Pharma Overpromised on Antidepressants
...
As it turns out, the other paper published around the same time, this one in the British Medical Journal, did a deep examination of the clinical data. The author team, headed by scientists at the US Food and Drug Administration, combined the results of 232 different trials comparing SSRIs with placebos for patients with depression. This way, they had something equivalent to a giant trial with more than 73,000 patients.
What they found was that the drugs did work better than placebos — but only in about 15% of the patients.
One telling observation about the drug trial data is that the placebo effect is enormous. About two-thirds of all the patients in the placebo arm got better. Those on the drugs were only slightly more likely to improve and the magnitude of their improvement was a little better than those in the placebo arms. The power of the placebo effect could help explain the reason so many patients experience relief from the drugs.
One of the study authors is Irving Kirsch, the associate director of the center for placebo studies at Harvard Medical School. He says that there’s a difference between the placebo effect and a placebo response in a specific trial. The placebo effect is a psychological phenomenon in which the perception of being treated makes people feel better. The effect has been measured even when people know they’re taking a sugar pill. But the placebo response in a drug trial can also include recoveries that happen on their own. Depression symptoms sometimes fluctuate, so people may have felt better whether they got any treatment at all.
In the study compiling the clinical data, Kirsch said he believes the people in the placebo arm probably got better through a combination of unaided improvement and the placebo effect. Loss of hope is part of depression, and getting a placebo can lift people’s hopes.
The reason the FDA approved SSRI drugs in the first place was that clinical trials showed a modest difference between the drugs and placebos. What remained unknown, until now, was whether this modest benefit showed up because most people getting the drugs got a very small improvement or whether the effect was more substantial but only happened in a small subset of patients.
The new analysis shows it was the latter — the benefits beyond placebo were concentrated in just 15% of patients.
Response to acute monotherapy for major depressive disorder in randomized, placebo controlled trials submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration: individual participant data analysis
https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj-2021-067606
What drugs are prescribed for serotonin? I’ve heard of zoloft and one suicidal friend took prozac. Said it was great. Others thought it was awful.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved these SSRIs to treat depression:
Citalopram (Celexa)
Escitalopram (Lexapro)
Fluoxetine (Prozac)
Paroxetine (Paxil, Pexeva)
Sertraline (Zoloft)
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/in-depth/ssris/art-20044825
I seem to remember reading that regular exercise can help the brain to do naturally what the SSRI does chemically.
But the exercise required - not so sure about how much or how strenuous. I think a one mile walk everyday wasn’t shown to help.
Are the young men who become krazy killers getting little to no exercise? Are they living a sedentary lifestyle?
I suspect the SSRI dosing is made more complicated by the ways in which the adolescent brain and physiology is developing, and going through so many changes.
Didn’t most schools do away with mandatory Phys Ed classes?
There could be some interesting data out there just waiting to be uncovered.
For all we know, Big Pharma might be in on the connection and has already left fingerprints (so to speak).
Video games and too much time indoors.
My doctor told me that the SSRIs don’t produce a feeling of euphoria (which is what I thought they did) so much as a feeling of not caring. They supposedly help people who feel overwhelmed with problems to have a sense that everything is okay; nothing to worry about. She said if someone is taking too high a dose, you might see such a person at an event like a funeral in which everybody is weeping, but the person on the SSRI is behaving as if everything is normal and that nothing is sad about the occasion. If that is true, it would explain the cold-blooded efficiency of the mass shooters who methodically shoot people as if it is just a video game.
As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.
Manic/depression is treated with lithium, which works very well on the manic phase, but doesn’t do much for the depression. Anti-depressants do little for the manic phase and are unreliable treatments for depression.
Just on the face of it, there seems to be two different, albeit related, things going on here.
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