3 ms·

Entirely untrue and offensive. Propagating this is dangerous and fuels the stigma that makes treatment harder. Not all mental illness is chemical, but a lot ve

Entirely untrue and offensive. Propagating this is dangerous and fuels the stigma that makes treatment harder. Not all mental illness is chemical, but a lot very much is.

jdietrich 8y ago
Chemical imbalances may possibly play some role in depression, but we have no idea of which chemicals or what the "correct" balance is. Antidepressant drugs do work, but we don't really know why. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors appear to work. So do monoamine oxidase inhibitors. So do selective norepinephrine and dopamine reuptake inhibitors. We used to think that tianeptine was a serotonin reuptake enhancer, but we now think it's a mu-opioid agonist; either way, it seems to work as an antidepressant. Opipramol is a stone cold whodunnit of a drug. Nobody really knows what causes depression. We know that there are certain risk factors, we know that there are useful treatments, but we don't really have a clue what's going on inside the brain. The chemical imbalance hypothesis isn't particularly accurate or particularly helpful. Psychiatrists see some patients who are severely depressed for no apparent reason, but most see far more patients who just have lives that would make anyone miserable. Depression is emphatically not randomly distributed - prevalence rates are vastly higher in certain groups, for reasons that can only plausibly be psychosocial. The chemical imbalance hypothesis lets society abrogate responsibility for the fact that a lot of people are justifiably downtrodden, despondent and hopeless. We need to recognise depression as a complex, multifaceted disorder with neurological, cognitive and social components. Antidepressant drugs have life-changing effects for some patients, but psychotherapy and lifestyle interventions are also enormously valuable. Some patients achieve complete remission within weeks of starting antidepressant drug treatment; others have tried four or five drugs with no noticeable benefit. If you're suffering from depression, you'd be foolish not to try drug treatments, but you'd be equally foolish to only try drugs.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
daxorid 8y ago
I'm going to defend 69132 here. 1. We know that the symptoms of many different varieties of mental illness have been helped by the administration of SSRIs and other drugs that alter brain chemistry. 2. But what we most assuredly do not know is that mental illness patients have detectably different brain chemistry from baseline. We assume from (1) that (2) follows, but we have no actual evidence of (2). Herein lies the problem. We cannot make a scientific statement on (2) predicated only on (1). In this specific sense, OP is correct. And the downvotes are unfair. And more research is needed.
- hellofunk 8y ago
  I think there a difference between saying what you have said, which admits the possibility of real chemical imbalance based on surrounding contexts, even if more research and evidence is necessary to fully understand or prove it, vs, outright saying that it is a "myth," as the OP did, which is both dismissive and inaccurate.
  - ianai 8y ago
    Yes. I’m not a neurologist and my views shouldn’t be taken as medical. But many issues are classified by the nature of their remediation. Also, it’s my understanding that treating depression with just medicine and no counseling is frowned upon.

Entirely untrue and offensive. Propagating this is dangerous and fuels the stigma that makes treatment harder. Not all mental illness is chemical, but a lot very much is.

jdietrich 8y ago

Chemical imbalances may possibly play some role in depression, but we have no idea of which chemicals or what the "correct" balance is. Antidepressant drugs do work, but we don't really know why. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors appear to work. So do monoamine oxidase inhibitors. So do selective norepinephrine and dopamine reuptake inhibitors. We used to think that tianeptine was a serotonin reuptake enhancer, but we now think it's a mu-opioid agonist; either way, it seems to work as an antidepressant. Opipramol is a stone cold whodunnit of a drug. Nobody really knows what causes depression. We know that there are certain risk factors, we know that there are useful treatments, but we don't really have a clue what's going on inside the brain. The chemical imbalance hypothesis isn't particularly accurate or particularly helpful. Psychiatrists see some patients who are severely depressed for no apparent reason, but most see far more patients who just have lives that would make anyone miserable. Depression is emphatically not randomly distributed - prevalence rates are vastly higher in certain groups, for reasons that can only plausibly be psychosocial. The chemical imbalance hypothesis lets society abrogate responsibility for the fact that a lot of people are justifiably downtrodden, despondent and hopeless. We need to recognise depression as a complex, multifaceted disorder with neurological, cognitive and social components. Antidepressant drugs have life-changing effects for some patients, but psychotherapy and lifestyle interventions are also enormously valuable. Some patients achieve complete remission within weeks of starting antidepressant drug treatment; others have tried four or five drugs with no noticeable benefit. If you're suffering from depression, you'd be foolish not to try drug treatments, but you'd be equally foolish to only try drugs.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

daxorid 8y ago

I'm going to defend 69132 here. 1. We know that the symptoms of many different varieties of mental illness have been helped by the administration of SSRIs and other drugs that alter brain chemistry. 2. But what we most assuredly do not know is that mental illness patients have detectably different brain chemistry from baseline. We assume from (1) that (2) follows, but we have no actual evidence of (2). Herein lies the problem. We cannot make a scientific statement on (2) predicated only on (1). In this specific sense, OP is correct. And the downvotes are unfair. And more research is needed.

hellofunk 8y ago
I think there a difference between saying what you have said, which admits the possibility of real chemical imbalance based on surrounding contexts, even if more research and evidence is necessary to fully understand or prove it, vs, outright saying that it is a "myth," as the OP did, which is both dismissive and inaccurate.
- ianai 8y ago
  Yes. I’m not a neurologist and my views shouldn’t be taken as medical. But many issues are classified by the nature of their remediation. Also, it’s my understanding that treating depression with just medicine and no counseling is frowned upon.