Wistful wrote:Depression can be an illness, if one has a deficiency in serotonin it is no more their fault than someone who has a deficiency in insulin.
Depression has *never* been linked to low serotonin. Never. Not even once. While this is a widely held belief its simply has not been proven by science. If you don't believe me I suggest that you point me to some research to the contrary. If someone actually made that link they would win the nobel prize.
The reason that so many people (and doctors) believe this is due to a huge marketing campaign by the large pharmaceutical companies in the early '90 when they wanted to sell SSRIs. They implied that they had found this link but it was a lie. Now that the patents have run out on those drugs they are off selling other types of drugs that affect other neurotransmitters. Its amazing how many doctors still believe that there is some truth in this. Of course much of modern day psychiatry is based on this unproven idea.
Its my personal belief that most antidepressants actually _create_ chemical imbalances and this is how they produce their results. Unless a doctors measures a low neurotransmitter level before putting you on a particular drug he is just guessing. There is no way for him to know that you have imbalance without a test. Worse yet me may make things a lot worse (just ask the family's of the countless people who have died from these drugs.)
Of course its possible that some people have low serotonin its just never been proven. Even if you had low serotonin, there is no proof yet that it would result in depression. My guess is that a very low portion of people with depression actually have low serotonin. Both before and now after the marketing of SSRIs other antidepressants have targeted other neurotransmitters and have been just as effective.
If you have a headache and take aspirin and it makes your headache go away does that mean you have an asprin deficiently? This is the logic that has been used with the effectiveness of antidepressants. They boost chemicals that can make you feel better (sometimes) but not fix necessarily what is wrong with you. The way that they work is not unlike many street drugs.
I'm not saying they are not useful in some cases. I just personally think they are way over prescribed. I really think that most cases of depression have a real physical cause (apeana, low B12, thyroid, etc) or psychological causes (divorse, breakup, death, etc) In both cases I think drugs to mask the problem is the wrong approach. The widespread use of antidepressants has directly correlated with there wide spread marketing...
I recommend that you check out some of the following books:
- Your Drug May Be Your Problem: How and Why to Stop Taking Psychiatric Medications
- The Anti-Depressant Fact Book: What Your Doctor Won't Tell You About Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa, and Luvox
- The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It
- The Antidepressant Solution: A Step-by-Step Guide to Safely Overcoming Antidepressant Withdrawal, Depend
- Let Them Eat Prozac: The Unhealthy Relationship Between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression
- Talking Back To Prozac: What Doctors Aren't Telling You About Today's Most Controversial Drug
- Blaming the Brain: The Truth About Drugs and Mental Health
- The Prozac Conspiracy: A Novel Exposing the Mass-Production of Mental Illness
- The Invisible Plague: The Rise of mental Illness from 1750 to the Present
- Toxic Psychiatry: Why Therapy, Empathy and Love Must Replace the Drugs, Electroshock, and Biochemical Theories
- Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All into Patients
- The Big Fix: How the Pharmaceutical Industry Rips Off American Consumers
- Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs Are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies
- Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs: A Guide for Informed Consent
- America Fooled: The Truth About Antidepressants, Antipsychotics And How We've Been Deceived
- The Hundred-Year Lie: How Food and Medicine Are Destroying Your Health