#336 Whether Antidepressants Actually Work and the Myth of Serotonin Imbalance | Professor Joanna Moncrieff

Today we’re having an uncomfortable but very necessary conversation about antidepressants and the theory that these drugs work for those with depression by correcting imbalanced chemicals in their brain.

Our guest to discuss this topic is Joanna Moncrieff, a Professor of Psychiatry at University College London, and works as a consultant psychiatrist in the NHS. She is author of numerous scientific papers including a major review that showed there was little evidence to support the idea that depression is caused by a serotonin abnormality. Her most recent book "Chemically Imbalanced: the making and unmaking of the serotonin myth” is what we’re going to be discussing today.

This was a complete eye opener for me. For years I believed in the pharmaceutical washed message that antidepressants worked because of a genuine brain chemical imbalance that we corrected with medications. This is not proven.

Today we’ll discuss over-use and misrepresentation of psychiatric drugs in the public sphere, the changing philosophy of mental health and how we got to a point where over 8 million people in the UK use antidepressants.

We discuss what serotonin is, how we measure it in the body, why the imbalance theory is inconclusive, whether antidepressants have good evidence that they work and their many side effects.

I want to make it clear that this episode is not meant to shame or belittle anyone on medications for mental health, but provide accurate information about how we can safely treat these problems and offer informed consent weighing up the pros and cons of medications like antidepressants. The use of these medications has well recognised withdrawal and dependency effects and should not be stopped without strict supervision of your medical practitioner. 

We’ve also linked to the Maudsley deprescribing guidelines here in the show notes for practitioners educating themselves on how to do this with their patients.

Chemically Imbalanced Book

Website: https://joannamoncrieff.com/

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