3 ms·

chemical imbalance is a myth and most certainly untrue there is no evidence that chemical imbalance, though a myth, causes depression a Scam used to sell Proz

• tengbretson 2y ago
  Its an absurd description of a problem. Everything ranging from a thunderstorm to too much mustard on a sandwich can accurately be described as a "chemical imbalance".
• Workaccount2 2y ago
  That article is all over the place with it's verbage and intention. What it is actually saying is that there was a meta study done that found low serotonin itself was not necessarily the cause of depression. However drugs that target serotonin still work as anti-depressants. It's really a terrible article. Never mind using "chemical imbalance" and "low serotonin" interchangeably throughout the article.
• taurath 2y ago
  I think of it as a marketing term to reduce social stigma, which was massive at the time because it used to be thought of as something for hysterics, invoking the imagery of men in white coats taking people off to the looney bin. What’s disturbing and awful is the field of psychiatry has been so completely taken over by it - psychiatrists tend not to do much other than dispense pills and have patients fill out forms, like they are in a drug trial. They play whack a mole with peoples nervous systems and prescribe very wide acting meds. Psychiatrists used to be interested in the whole mental health of people rather than stats and what drugs they’re on. They might actually talk about trauma, suggest other therapies. There’s a big body of evidence that the trauma model has a lot of truth to it, as opposed to the “illness” model which presupposes a chemical cause, treating medication like some sort of split that you rarely ever take off. The trauma model has problems but its much more close to the underlying root causes.
• amanaplanacanal 2y ago
  The drugs still work though, even if not by the mechanism that they thought.
  • Levitating 2y ago
    Only with very severe cases of depression, where the SSRIs work by numbing all emotion, positive or negative. For mild to medium cases, a placebo gives a similar effect. If you want I could dig for the paper I am thinking of.
    • gruez 2y ago
      Not sure which paper you're referring to, but the general claim has been rebutted by a psychiatrist: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/ssris-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/ssris-much-more-than-y... (under #4 and 5)
  • Bankli 2y ago
    Anecdotally, they didn't work in my case. I had a numb penis for it, though.
  • lm28469 2y ago
    It works the same way morphine fixes a broken leg, by treating the symptoms