Chemically Imbalanced – by Dr. Joanna Moncrieff

The author, a professor of psychiatry, challenges the prevailing consensus that depression is often caused by a neurotransmitter imbalance, and as such, she further challenges the most popularly-prescribed class of antidepressants, SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, whose job is do what it says on the tin, with the end goal of your brain having more serotonin in it because you’re keeping the serotonin you do make for longer).

Her position is that depression is only caused by—and can only be fixed by—external factors, and that any benefit from antidepressants is placebo (in contrast, at 10almonds we wrote a while back about the more widely-accepted explanation of the hit-and-miss nature of whether antidepressants help someone is that often people are simply taking the wrong class of antidepressants for their specific depression; see: Antidepressants: Personalization Is Key!).

She asserts that depression is not even a real medical condition, and is simply a social phenomenon, and she hopes that one day her colleagues in the profession will agree.

It’s worth noting that a more moderate version of the first part of her assertions (that personal life conditions are often a major causal factor) is a common view by prescribers in the author’s native UK, where doctors have coined a colorful name for this condition. However, SSRIs are usually still the first recourse, on a “try it and see” basis.

Dr. Moncrieff devotes several chapters to the unwanted side effects that can be experienced, and considers the incidence of such to be important enough—and persistent enough, sometimes lasting for a while after discontinuation—to be a violation of the “first, do no harm” principle.

The style is… confident, let’s say. The author accepts that there are a plurality of views—hers, and the wrong ones held by most people in her profession. She also encourages us as readers to make our own decisions—avoid antidepressants (and, in fact, psychiatric meds of any kind, especially antipsychotics for people experiencing psychosis), or destroy our health; it’s up to us. She recognizes that very many people believe antidepressants have changed their lives for the better—and she considers those now-happier people to be fools duped by Big Pharma.

Bottom line: on the one hand, this looks a lot like 288 pages of the author’s firmly-held confirmation bias; on the other hand, that doesn’t change the fact that it is worth at the very least considering, before embarking on a course of treatment, “why are we assuming that the issue is serotonin specifically?”, because (per the prevailing scientific consensus) sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t.

Click here to check out Chemically Imbalanced, and consider the options!