https://doctorbuzz.substack.com/p/was-to...epressants
EXCERPTS: 17 years ago, back when Tom Cruise was young and Matt Lauer still had a job, the two had an uncomfortable interview on the Today show. Really uncomfortable. After chummily discussing Cruise’s engagement to Katie Holmes, the conversation chilled when it pivoted to the topic of Brooke Shields and her use of antidepressants. This rankled Cruise and his Scientologist beliefs, and at one point he snarled, “There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance in the body.”
A paper published last week in Nature drew a remarkable amount of attention, with its assertion that there was very little evidence to support the so-called “serotonin theory” of depression, that a deficiency in brain serotonin transmission is a primary driver of depressive disorders...
[...] In other words… Tom Cruise was right. Well, at least about that. The review authors did not weigh in on Scientology or the wisdom of marrying Katie Holmes.
While I am very happy for Tom Cruise and his medical vindication, I am more interested in how the hype around this study affects our view and use of antidepressants. Is it time to fire our psychiatrist and toss out our selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) prescriptions? I think that’s a poor interpretation of this work. However, a critical appraisal of the value of antidepressant medications is worth our societal while, especially since approximately 15-20% of American adults have taken antidepressants in the past month, mostly SSRIs.
A first important point to make, well known to those who have followed psychiatry in the past decade, is that the “chemical imbalance” theory of depression largely has already been abandoned. After all, the Nature paper was an “umbrella review” — namely, a review of other reviews and meta-analyses — so everything they covered was old news... (MORE - missing details)
RELATED THREAD (Scivillage): No evidence depression is ‘caused by chemical imbalance’ finds comprehensive review
- - - - - -
Scientology and psychiatry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientolog...psychiatry
Why is scientology opposed to psychiatric abuses?
https://www.scientology.org/faq/scientol...buses.html
EXCERPTS: 17 years ago, back when Tom Cruise was young and Matt Lauer still had a job, the two had an uncomfortable interview on the Today show. Really uncomfortable. After chummily discussing Cruise’s engagement to Katie Holmes, the conversation chilled when it pivoted to the topic of Brooke Shields and her use of antidepressants. This rankled Cruise and his Scientologist beliefs, and at one point he snarled, “There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance in the body.”
A paper published last week in Nature drew a remarkable amount of attention, with its assertion that there was very little evidence to support the so-called “serotonin theory” of depression, that a deficiency in brain serotonin transmission is a primary driver of depressive disorders...
[...] In other words… Tom Cruise was right. Well, at least about that. The review authors did not weigh in on Scientology or the wisdom of marrying Katie Holmes.
While I am very happy for Tom Cruise and his medical vindication, I am more interested in how the hype around this study affects our view and use of antidepressants. Is it time to fire our psychiatrist and toss out our selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) prescriptions? I think that’s a poor interpretation of this work. However, a critical appraisal of the value of antidepressant medications is worth our societal while, especially since approximately 15-20% of American adults have taken antidepressants in the past month, mostly SSRIs.
A first important point to make, well known to those who have followed psychiatry in the past decade, is that the “chemical imbalance” theory of depression largely has already been abandoned. After all, the Nature paper was an “umbrella review” — namely, a review of other reviews and meta-analyses — so everything they covered was old news... (MORE - missing details)
RELATED THREAD (Scivillage): No evidence depression is ‘caused by chemical imbalance’ finds comprehensive review
- - - - - -
Scientology and psychiatry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientolog...psychiatry
Why is scientology opposed to psychiatric abuses?
https://www.scientology.org/faq/scientol...buses.html