The chemical imbalance theory – the idea that a lack or excess of neurotransmitters in the brain causes psychiatric ‘disorders’ like depression – has been debunked innumerable times.
Eight years ago, Harvard Medical School’s Irving Kirsch published a review article of antidepressants in which he wrote:
The serotonin theory is as close as any theory in the history of science to having been proved wrong.1
Seventeen years ago, researchers Jeffrey Lacasse and Jonathan Leo stated that:
Contemporary neuroscience research has failed to confirm any serotonergic lesion in any mental disorder, and has in fact provided significant counterevidence to the explanation of a simple neurotransmitter deficiency.2
Following the publication of the DSM-5 in 2013, the Task Force Chair, David Kupfer, admitted that ‘We’re still waiting’3 to discover biological and genetic markers for the brain diseases he purports exist.
We could go on but you get the point.
For decades, those familiar with the literature have been privy to this con. One need not possess an in-depth knowledge of the research to avoid being hoodwinked, however. A simple awareness that there has never been an objective way to measure neurotransmitters in the brain, nor has there ever been an objective or reliable way to distinguish a depressed person from a non-depressed person, is all one really needs to dismiss psychiatry and Big-Pharma’s mythology.
Despite the lack of evidence supporting psychiatry’s claims, sections of the public still cling to the idea that their low mood is caused by a chemical imbalance and that they require antidepressants to correct it. In the present year, then, why not have another swing at this dead horse?
Enter Dr Joanna Moncrieff, researcher, author, and tireless debunker of psychiatric pseudoscience. Moncrieff and colleagues recently published an extensive systematic review of the literature regarding the theory that serotonin imbalances cause depression.
Unsurprisingly, the researchers came to the same conclusions as those quoted above:
Our comprehensive review of the major strands of research on serotonin shows there is no convincing evidence that depression is associated with, or caused by, lower serotonin concentrations or activity.4
The researchers urged the scientific community to ‘acknowledge that the serotonin theory of depression is not empirically substantiated.’5
This latest debunk obviously isn’t the first, and it likely won’t be the last. Nonetheless, it can’t hurt to be reminded of psychiatry’s scientific bankruptcy.
Footnotes
- Kirsch, I. (2014). Antidepressants and the placebo effect. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 222(3), 128–134, p. 128.
- Lacasse, J. R., & Leo, J. (2005). Serotonin and depression: A disconnect between the advertisements and the scientific literature. PLoS Medicine, 2(12), 1211-1216, p. 1212.
- Kupfer, D. (2013, May 3). Statement from DSM Chair David Kupfer. Retrieved May 25, 2020, from Mad in America: www.madinamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Statement-from-dsm-chair-david-kupfer-md.pdf
- Moncrieff, J., Cooper, R.E., Stockmann, T. Amendola, S., Hengartner, M. P., & Horowitz, M. A. (2022) The serotonin theory of depression: a systematic umbrella review of the evidence. Molecular Psychiatry, 1-14, p. 11.
- Moncrieff et al., 2022, p. 12.
