I hope this review will be a decisive blow to the Serotonin Hypothesis of Depression and the useless prescription of all those pills, so that we can really work on what is causing the depression or anxiety,
What is the "issue"?
Surveys indicate that 85-90 percent of the public believes low serotonin or a chemical imbalance causes depression.
Among 237 psychology students interviewed, 46 percent had heard the chemical imbalance explanation from a physician.
And what is the reality ............
A comprehensive, well-powered, high-quality umbrella review now determines that the theory is “not empirically substantiated.”
In normal words it: there is no evidence to support this theory, meaning is not true, meaning it is a marketing hoax of pharma, and the patients pay the health price.
In 1965 by Harvard psychiatrist Joseph Schildkraut, launches the hypothesis of that serotonin imbalance could be the key in depression and simplified by pharma marketing to the “chemical imbalance” theory of depression and anxiety, and they did this amazingly well as research almost everyone beliefs it.
The “Chemical Imbalance” Metaphor Takes Root
In December 2005, as advertising for SSRI antidepressants flooded American magazines, talk shows, and network TV, the result of multibillion-dollar campaigns pitched in this case directly to consumers.
Florida-based professors and researchers Jeffrey Lacasse and Jonathan Leo asked pointedly in PLoS Medicine, “Are the claims made in SSRI advertising congruent with the scientific evidence?”
The answer in “Serotonin and Depression: A Disconnect Between the Advertisements and the Scientific Literature,” their well-researched article, was a resounding no.
Lacasse and Leo found repeated evidence that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had approved the marketing of SSRIs with two phrases still heavily in the subjunctive—that depression “may be due to a serotonin deficiency” and that SSRI efficacy, “modestly” outcompeting placebo, was “presumed to be linked to potentiation of serotonergic activity.” However, the research itself could not identify the precise mechanism.
The FDA had accepted aspirational language that the drugs “help to restore the brain’s chemical balance” and “bring serotonin levels closer to normal,” even though both claims were, and remain, scientifically meaningless. 😳
“There is no such thing as a scientifically established correct ‘balance’ of serotonin,” Lacasse and Leo cautioned more than a decade ago, joining numerous other experts then and now. Additionally, both aspirational claims rest on a hypothesis that follow-up studies would end up contradicting repeatedly. In short, both the hypothesis and the expensive marketing that pushed it into American living rooms rested on a hedge: “Scientists believe that it could be linked with an imbalance of a chemical in the brain called serotonin.”
The amazingly great marketing of a myth
The hedge proved highly effective, even though, as David Healy explained in 2015 in “Serotonin and Depression,” in the BMJ, in practice, it entailed embracing or tacitly accepting “the marketing of a myth.” Through further oversimplification, a revised metaphor of a “chemical imbalance” took root as folk wisdom for multiple, dissimilar conditions listed in the DSM, the handbook for mental disorders.
Returning to the controversy in “Antidepressants and the Chemical Imbalance Theory of Depression” (2015), Lacasse and Leo found that while the marketing had shifted emphasis from “correcting imbalances” to “‘adjusting’ or ‘affecting’ neurotransmitter levels,” leading psychiatrists were if anything, more wedded to the “chemical imbalance” metaphor than before.
Some had taken to the airwaves to say that it simplified communication with their patients. Daniel Carlat, the editor of The Carlat Psychiatry Report, explained on National Public Radio when asked what we know about psychiatric medication:
We don’t know how the medications actually work in the brain…. I’ll often say something like the way Zoloft works, is, it increases the level of serotonin in your brain (or synapses, neurons) and, presumably, the reason you’re depressed or anxious is that you have some sort of a deficiency.
And I say that [chuckles] not because I really believe it, because I know the evidence really isn’t there for us to understand the mechanism.
I think I say that because patients want to know something. And they want to know that we as physicians have some basic understanding of what we’re doing when we’re prescribing medications.
They certainly don’t want to know that a psychiatrist essentially has no idea how these medications work (Qtd. in Lacasse and Leo).
Cut to the Present-day
A major new review of the research—the first of its kind exhaustively reviewing the evidence, published today in the journal Molecular Psychiatry—reaches a strikingly similar conclusion. In “The Serotonin Theory of Depression: A Systematic Umbrella Review of the Evidence,” University College London Psychiatry Professor Joanna Moncrieff and a team of five other top European researchers found “there is no evidence of a connection between reduced serotonin levels or activity and depression.”
The peer-reviewed umbrella review—representing one of the highest forms of evidence in scientific research—was extrapolated from meta-analyses and systematic reviews on depression and serotonin levels, receptors, and transporters involving tens of thousands of participants.
Although “the serotonin hypothesis of depression is still influential,” Moncrieff and coauthors noted, citing widely adopted textbooks published as recently as 2020 and surveys indicating that “85-90 percent of the public believes that depression is caused by low serotonin or a chemical imbalance,” the primary research indicates there is “no support for the hypothesis that depression is caused by lowered serotonin activity or concentrations.”
Among other key findings:
“Research on serotonin receptors and the serotonin transporter, the protein targeted by most antidepressants, found weak and inconclusive evidence suggestive of higher levels of serotonin activity in people with depression.” Widespread use of antidepressants is seen as the likely cause.
The researchers also looked at studies where serotonin levels had been “artificially lowered in hundreds of people” (by depriving their diets of the necessary amino acid that makes serotonin) and found that “lowering serotonin in this way did not produce depression in hundreds of healthy volunteers,” according to a 2007 meta-analysis and several recent studies.
Numerous other reviews on re-examination were found to provide weak, inconsistent, or nonexistent evidence of a connection between serotonin and depression.
The researchers also probed well-powered studies involving tens of thousands of patients that focused on gene variation, including the gene for the serotonin transporter. These found “no difference in the genes between people with depression and healthy controls.” As such, “high-quality genetic studies effectively exclude an association between genotypes related to the serotonin system and depression, including a proposed interaction with stress.”
The researchers also looked at “the effects of stressful life events and found that these exerted a strong effect on people’s risk of becoming depressed—the more of these a person had experienced, the more likely they were to be depressed.”
The FDA had accepted aspirational language that the drugs “help to restore the brain’s chemical balance” and “bring serotonin levels closer to normal,” even though both claims were, and remain, scientifically meaningless.
“There is no such thing as a scientifically established correct ‘balance’ of serotonin,” Lacasse and Leo cautioned more than a decade ago, joining numerous other experts then and now. Additionally, both aspirational claims rest on a hypothesis that follow-up studies would end up contradicting repeatedly. In short, both the hypothesis and the expensive marketing that pushed it into American living rooms rested on a hedge: “Scientists believe that it could be linked with an imbalance of a chemical in the brain called serotonin.”
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Inevitably, the problem of spreading false scientific information dovetails with that of medical ethics and the risk of enabling medically-induced harms. Because physicians swear to uphold the Hippocratic oath Primum non nocere (“First Do No Harm”), Lacasse and Leo questioned “the ethics of telling a falsehood to patients because you think it is good for them.”
They asked more broadly of those repeating the discredited hypothesis, whether as metaphor or oversimplification: “Do you believe it is ethical to present a falsified scientific theory as a fact to a patient? What are the possible negative effects of doing so?”
A significant consequence they anticipated at the time was that patients would realistically “conclude that they have been misled.”
The peer-reviewed umbrella review—representing one of the highest forms of evidence in scientific research—was extrapolated from meta-analyses and systematic reviews on depression and serotonin levels, receptors, and transporters involving tens of thousands of participants.
Although “the serotonin hypothesis of depression is still influential,” Moncrieff and coauthors noted, citing widely adopted textbooks published as recently as 2020 and surveys indicating that “85-90 percent of the public believes that depression is caused by low serotonin or a chemical imbalance,” the primary research indicates there is “no support for the hypothesis that depression is caused by lowered serotonin activity or concentrations.”
Among other key findings:
“Research on serotonin receptors and the serotonin transporter, the protein targeted by most antidepressants, found weak and inconclusive evidence suggestive of higher levels of serotonin activity in people with depression.” Widespread use of antidepressants is seen as the likely cause.
The researchers also looked at studies where serotonin levels had been “artificially lowered in hundreds of people” (by depriving their diets of the necessary amino acid that makes serotonin) and found that “lowering serotonin in this way did not produce depression in hundreds of healthy volunteers,” according to a 2007 meta-analysis and several recent studies.
Numerous other reviews on re-examination were found to provide weak, inconsistent, or nonexistent evidence of a connection between serotonin and depression.
The researchers also probed well-powered studies involving tens of thousands of patients that focused on gene variation, including the gene for the serotonin transporter. These found “no difference in the genesbetween people with depression and healthy controls.” As such, “high-quality genetic studies effectively exclude an association between genotypes related to the serotonin system and depression, including a proposed interaction with stress.”
The researchers also looked at “the effects of stressful life events and found that these exerted a strong effect on people’s risk of becoming depressed—the more of these a person had experienced, the more likely they were to be depressed.”
“The popularity of the chemical imbalance idea of depression has coincided with a huge increase in the use of antidepressants,” note Moncrieff and coauthor Mark A. Horowitz in the study’s press release.
“Prescriptions for antidepressants have sky-rocketed since the 1990s, going from being rare to a situation now where 1 out of 6 adults in the UK and 2 percent of the teenagers are prescribed an antidepressant in a given year.” The practical ramifications of the umbrella review are thus vast and consequential, involving millions of people across multiple countries because the findings are tied to a discredited theory that is still fueling mass prescribing on a global basis. Moncrieff explained in the press release: Patients should not be told that depression is caused by low serotonin or by a chemical imbalance and they should not be led to believe that antidepressants work by targeting these hypothetical and unproven abnormalities. In particular, the idea that antidepressants work in the same way as insulin for diabetes is completely misleading. We do not understand what antidepressants are doing to the brain exactly, and giving people this sort of misinformation prevents them from making an informed decision about whether to take antidepressants or not. Invited to extrapolate the review’s findings for Psychology Today, Moncrieff added: Antidepressant use has reached epidemic proportions across the world and is still rising, especially among young people. Many people who take them suffer side effects and withdrawal problems that can be really severe and debilitating. A major driver of this situation is the false belief that depression is due to a chemical imbalance. It is high time to inform the public that this belief is not grounded in science.
So when you feel depressed or anxious don't run to the doctor for some pills but do what is scientifically proven to work.
Take up a team sport or where you sport in a team. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6683619/
Walk outside especially when is it is sunny. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-brain-food/202202/walking-sunshine-the-light-day-improves-mental-health
do something that makes you laugh https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7444838/
It is healthy, happy and more fun and most of all YOU are in charge of your health.
To conclude the question that becomes more valid when science is right: What does that mean for how we look at depression and anxiety? and What could we as individuals do and also what can we do in the workplace to take back control?
Actually Anxiety and Depression are originating from an imbalance, but the imbalance is in how the person is perceiving events that happened.
Simply said: Managers. leaders, coaches can assist your employees and clients to reframe the perceptions and with that the outcome. I am aware that the process can be a bit more bumpy and still it can be done without becoming a therapist.
One of the solutions coaching on the 3 Brains - Head, Hear and Gut - Intelligence.
Because what really separates people who are flourishing personally and professionally from those who are consistently miserable is how the circumstances of life are interpreted and processed.
When we perceive life and work from our 3 Brains we are aware that:
1. Our heart is in action when it is all about relationship and bonding, a pain there can lead to depressed feelings.
2. Our gut is 24/7 busy with your personal well being a uncertainty there about "survival" is originating the feeling of anxiety
3. Our head love to provide the right prediction so when our Heart or Gut is in stress, our head is running overtime in doing over analyses and remuneration to find a solution for the future or past - PS both impossible as we can not change the past or predict the future- .
Love to read you thoughts. and have a beautiful happy week.
Cheers Christoffel Sneijders
Source:
This article is partly a copy and originally written by Christopher Lane, Ph.D.. He is the author of Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness.
References
References
Frances CM, Lysaker PH, and Robinson RP. (2007) The “Chemical Imbalance” Explanation for Depression: Origins, Lay Endorsement, and Clinical Implications.” Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 38(4), 411-20. [Link] Healy, D. (2015) Serotonin and Depression. BMJ 350, h1771 [Link] Lacasse JR and Leo J. (2005) Serotonin and Depression: A Disconnect between the Advertisements and the Scientific Literature. PLoS Medicine 2.12 e392. [Link]