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Chemical imbalance lie - Syne - Dec 31, 2017

https://qz.com/1162154/30-years-after-prozac-arrived-we-still-buy-the-lie-that-chemical-imbalances-cause-depression/?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits

Some 2,000 years ago, the Ancient Greek scholar Hippocrates argued that all ailments, including mental illnesses such as melancholia, could be explained by imbalances in the four bodily fluids, or “humors.” Today, most of us like to think we know better: Depression—our term for melancholia—is caused by an imbalance, sure, but a chemical imbalance, in the brain.

This explanation, widely cited as empirical truth, is false. It was once a tentatively-posed hypothesis in the sciences, but no evidence for it has been found, and so it has been discarded by physicians and researchers. Yet the idea of chemical imbalances has remained stubbornly embedded in the public understanding of depression.

Prozac, approved by the US Food and Drug Administration 30 years ago today, on Dec. 29, 1987, marked the first in a wave of widely prescribed antidepressants that built on and capitalized off this theory. No wonder: Taking a drug to tweak the biological chemical imbalances in the brain makes intuitive sense. But depression isn’t caused by a chemical imbalance, we don’t know how Prozac works, and we don’t even know for sure if it’s an effective treatment for the majority of people with depression.

One reason the theory of chemical imbalances won’t die is that it fits in with psychiatry’s attempt, over the past half century, to portray depression as a disease of the brain, instead of an illness of the mind. This narrative, which depicts depression as a biological condition that afflicts the material substance of the body, much like cancer, divorces depression from the self. It also casts aside the social factors that contribute to depression, such as isolation, poverty, or tragic events, as secondary concerns. Non-pharmaceutical treatments, such as therapy and exercise, often play second fiddle to drugs.
...
“[T]he serotonin hypothesis is typically presented as a collective scientific belief,” write Lacasse and Leo, though, as they note: “There is not a single peer-reviewed article that can be accurately cited to directly support claims of serotonin deficiency in any mental disorder, while there are many articles that present counterevidence.”
...
Meanwhile, 30 years after Prozac was released, rates of depression are higher than ever.




RE: Chemical imbalance lie - RainbowUnicorn - Dec 31, 2017

(Dec 31, 2017 12:16 AM)Syne Wrote: https://qz.com/1162154/30-years-after-prozac-arrived-we-still-buy-the-lie-that-chemical-imbalances-cause-depression/?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits

Some 2,000 years ago, the Ancient Greek scholar Hippocrates argued that all ailments, including mental illnesses such as melancholia, could be explained by imbalances in the four bodily fluids, or “humors.” Today, most of us like to think we know better: Depression—our term for melancholia—is caused by an imbalance, sure, but a chemical imbalance, in the brain.

This explanation, widely cited as empirical truth, is false. It was once a tentatively-posed hypothesis in the sciences, but no evidence for it has been found, and so it has been discarded by physicians and researchers. Yet the idea of chemical imbalances has remained stubbornly embedded in the public understanding of depression.

Prozac, approved by the US Food and Drug Administration 30 years ago today, on Dec. 29, 1987, marked the first in a wave of widely prescribed antidepressants that built on and capitalized off this theory. No wonder: Taking a drug to tweak the biological chemical imbalances in the brain makes intuitive sense. But depression isn’t caused by a chemical imbalance, we don’t know how Prozac works, and we don’t even know for sure if it’s an effective treatment for the majority of people with depression.

One reason the theory of chemical imbalances won’t die is that it fits in with psychiatry’s attempt, over the past half century, to portray depression as a disease of the brain, instead of an illness of the mind. This narrative, which depicts depression as a biological condition that afflicts the material substance of the body, much like cancer, divorces depression from the self. It also casts aside the social factors that contribute to depression, such as isolation, poverty, or tragic events, as secondary concerns. Non-pharmaceutical treatments, such as therapy and exercise, often play second fiddle to drugs.
...
“[T]he serotonin hypothesis is typically presented as a collective scientific belief,” write Lacasse and Leo, though, as they note: “There is not a single peer-reviewed article that can be accurately cited to directly support claims of serotonin deficiency in any mental disorder, while there are many articles that present counterevidence.”
...
Meanwhile, 30 years after Prozac was released, rates of depression are higher than ever.



1 claim with no evidence or data to back it up
Quote:This explanation, widely cited as empirical truth, is false.

2
Quote:but no evidence for it has been found

3
Quote:and so it has been discarded by physicians and researchers

4
Quote:But depression isn’t caused by a chemical imbalance, we don’t know how Prozac works, and we don’t even know for sure if it’s an effective treatment for the majority of people with depression.

5
Quote:built on and capitalized off this theory.

contradiction
Quote:No wonder: Taking a drug to tweak the biological chemical imbalances in the brain makes intuitive sense.

leaving it there for now... barely half way through and not noting the laymen-publics un-informed themed associative inferences of superior knowledge to medical profesionals
Quote:Today, most of us like to think we know better:



RE: Chemical imbalance lie - C C - Dec 31, 2017

(Dec 31, 2017 12:16 AM)Syne Wrote: [...] Prozac, approved by the US Food and Drug Administration 30 years ago today, on Dec. 29, 1987, marked the first in a wave of widely prescribed antidepressants that built on and capitalized off this theory.


Had an awkward debut as a numbered compound looking for a condition to treat when first developed in the early '70s. The Eli Lily company tested it as a high blood pressure agent and then as an anti-obesity drug. After one trial with a handful of subjects finally had success improving their mild depression, Interbrand contributed the "Prozac" name for it. In a marketing strategy move, Eli Lily dredged up and promoted the chemical imbalance theory to explain the supposed effectiveness. The practicing mental health community bought into it and spread the gospel to patients. A tradition of psychobabble was eclipsed by biobabble. [Though barring the possibility of being totally a placebo effect, there may still be biological / physiological reasons for the results. Daniel Carlat: ". . . [the] unequivocal, if perplexing truth about psychiatric drugs” [is that] “they work”.

- - -


RE: Chemical imbalance lie - Magical Realist - Dec 31, 2017

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-antidepressants-brain-structure-20140918-story.html


RE: Chemical imbalance lie - Syne - Dec 31, 2017

(Dec 31, 2017 04:57 AM)Magical Realist Wrote: http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-antidepressants-brain-structure-20140918-story.html

22 subjects [source] is far too small a sample size to be probative.

Five Reasons Not to Take SSRIs

Reason One: A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association says that SSRI's like Paxil and Prozac are no more effective in treating depression than a placebo pill. That means they are 33 per cent effective, which is the percent of patients who will respond well to a sugar pill.
...
Reason Two: A January 4 article in MedPage Today cites a study done at Columbia University and Johns Hopkins. The study says that doctors routinely prescribe not one but two or three SSRI's and other psychopharmological drugs in combination with few if any serious studies to back up the multiple usage. It's pretty obvious that the reason for these multiple prescriptions is that if one drug doesn't work, then perhaps two or three will.
...
Reason Three: More and more psychiatric disorders are appearing that might be called "lifestyle" diseases. What was called shyness, sadness, restlessness, shopping too much, high sex drive, low sex drive, and so on have increasingly been seen as diseases and many more will appear in the new DSM, the diagnostic manual of psychological and psychiatric disorders.
...
Reason Four: We're an over-medicated society, and the goal of drug companies and a compliant and harried medical establishment is ultimately to have some drug coursing through every individuals's bloodstream. It's a lot easier to quickly pop a pill or prescribe than it is to explore the reasons for a person's distress.
...
Reason Five: The whole serotonin hypothesis is challenged by these findings. What this new information shows is that there may be some help using SSRIs if there is a severe shortage of serotonin, but the average person's depression cannot simply be related to a "chemical imbalance." The human brain is too complicated and so are we to have a simple, quick explanation related to seratonin alone.




RE: Chemical imbalance lie - Magical Realist - Dec 31, 2017

"Lennard J. Davis is Professor in the English Department in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he had also served as Head."

Seems to me this is no expert on the science behind anti-depressants. Seems more like someone with an ideological agenda.

Now here's three more studies confirming the effects of anti-depressants.

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2016/10/technique-can-predict-if-antidepressants-will-help.html

http://www.auntminnie.com/index.aspx?sec=ser&sub=def&pag=dis&ItemID=57530

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22069111


RE: Chemical imbalance lie - Syne - Dec 31, 2017

(Dec 31, 2017 06:37 AM)Magical Realist Wrote: "Lennard J. Davis is Professor in the English Department in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he had also served as Head."

LOL!

"Lennard J. Davis, a nationally and internationally known American specialist in disability studies, is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Arts and Sciences, and also Professor of Disability and Human Development in the School of Applied Health Sciences and Professor of Medical Education in the University of Illinois College of Medicine." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennard_J._Davis

Quote:Seems to me this is no expert on the science behind anti-depressants.

Now here's another study confirming the effects of anti-depressants.

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2016/10/technique-can-predict-if-antidepressants-will-help.html

Did you miss the part of that study where they said some people "were less likely to recover with antidepressants"?
Nor is 80 a significant sample size.

Another day, another study casting doubt on antidepressants. The latest says that for children and teenagers, nearly all these drugs don’t work. So why do prescriptions for antidepressants in the UK continue to climb?

Previous research suggests that for adults too, the Prozac class of antidepressants – selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) – is no better than a placebo, at least in people with mild or moderate depression.

Confusingly, other research finds that these drugs do work, for example, a recent study that found that SSRIs work better than placebo for major depression in adults.

But there’s reason to think that we may not be able to trust most studies unless the researchers have no links to pharmaceutical firms, and have access to all trial data.

Last year when GlaxoSmithKline had to reveal full data about one of its own studies in teenagers, the rate of side effects such as suicidal thoughts was much higher than it initially appeared.
- https://www.newscientist.com/article/2093239-if-antidepressants-dont-work-well-why-are-they-so-popular/


Here’s some depressing recent medical news: Antidepressants don’t work. What’s even more depressing is that the pharmaceutical industry and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have deliberately deceived us into believing that they DO work. As a physician, this is frightening to me. Depression is among the most common problems seen in primary-care medicine and soon will be the second leading cause of disability in this country.

The study I’m talking about was published in The New England Journal of Medicine. It found that drug companies selectively publish studies on antidepressants. They have published nearly all the studies that show benefit — but almost none of the studies that show these drugs are ineffective.
- https://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/depression-medication-why_b_550098.html



Remember, if you feel that they work for you, that's all that should matter to you.

(Dec 31, 2017 06:37 AM)Magical Realist Wrote: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22069111

LOL! Read that title again:

"Antidepressant effects of magnetic resonance imaging--based stimulation on major depressive disorder: a double-blind randomized clinical trial."

"All patients were receiving a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor as the only antidepressant treatment." How do you suppose you test the efficacy of drugs that ALL the participants take? Rolleyes


RE: Chemical imbalance lie - Magical Realist - Dec 31, 2017

3 more studies..I'm just getting started...


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4790407/


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22069111

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170124140910.htm


RE: Chemical imbalance lie - Syne - Dec 31, 2017

(Dec 31, 2017 07:17 AM)Magical Realist Wrote: 3 more studies..I'm just getting started...


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4790407/

"However, larger studies, focused on specific compounds administered longitudinally to drug-naive patients are needed to finally clarify the impact of antidepressants on brain morphology in major depression. Indeed, a major limitation of the studies presented here is the low sample size, with most studies below 50 subjects and only one over 100 [62, 131]. Moreover, it is impossible to draw conclusions on the effect of single specific compounds because many studies include multiple antidepressants [49, 67, 68, 84, 119, 132, 133, 147] and very few studies focused on the effect of “non SSRIs” antidepressants."

Quote:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22069111

Again:
"All patients were receiving a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor as the only antidepressant treatment."

This was a study of the "magnetic resonance imaging--based stimulation" effect on depression...not the drugs. Rolleyes

Quote:https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170124140910.htm

36 subjects. Rolleyes


RE: Chemical imbalance lie - Magical Realist - Dec 31, 2017

You do realize that the anti-medication movement is just one step away from the anti-vaxxers?

http://metro.co.uk/2017/08/18/inside-the-anti-antidepressants-movement-6861500/