News: Moncrieff, et al. find no basis for "serotonin deficiency" theory

[Faure]

Here’s something from the Independent about this (paywall removed!)

 

And Moncrieff has written a blog post since the research was published.

[Ariel]

Write-up in The Economist (paywall temporarily waived):

A popular medical explanation for depression is rebuffed

https://econ.st/3cPfPsC

 

Here's a link to Moncrieff and Horowitz' (and others') original paper (currently open access):

The serotonin theory of depression: a systematic umbrella review of the evidence

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0

 

 

[Mirtazapine20mg]

Good work @Oaktree1, @Faure, and @Ariel 

[tsranga]

Moncrieffa response - 

 

https://www.madintheuk.com/2022/07/depression-imbalance-serotonin-moncrieff-review-ssri/

[methuselah]

Now, I’m not a fan of this guy or his politics but my dad is, and he knows what I’m dealing with re psych meds. Politics aside, word is CLEARLY spreading about these drugs, their impact, and the bad science their use is predicated upon.  See below if you’re interested…

Edit - warning, he does go off on a tangent re covid and fauci so if mods want to just pull the link, I included the relevant text below the link 

 

 https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-drugs-not-answer-every-human-problem.amp

 

In just the past few weeks, serious, very serious questions have emerged about some of the most widely prescribed drugs in America, very much including the COVID vaccines, but we want to begin tonight with what in any normal period would be front-page news around the world. It turns out the entire premise behind the most commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs appears to be completely wrong.  
 

These drugs are known as SSRI. They're ubiquitous. Between 1991 and 2018, total SSRI prescriptions in the U.S. rose by more than 3,000%. The number of prescriptions for the most common SSRI hit 224 million last year, 224 million prescriptions in a country of 330 million people. In other words, you know, dozens of people who are taking SSRIs. You may be taking them right now. And yet for decades there have been strong indications that there is a problem with these drugs and the most obvious is this.  

Antidepressants are supposed to cure depression. That's why they're prescribed. And yet, over the same period that SSRI prescriptions have risen 3,000%. The suicide rate, that may be the most reliable indicator of all of depression, has not fallen in the United States. In fact, the suicide rate has jumped by 35%. That's a huge increase. That's a lot of dead people.

Now, drug makers admit that their products may be part of the reason for the increase in suicide. The makers of Prozac, for example, can see that young people who take that drug have an increased risk of suicide compared to those who took a placebo. 

Think about that for a second. A drug that's supposed to make you less sad may make it more likely that you will kill yourself. How is that allowed? Well, it's been allowed because virtually no one has said a word about it. One person who did say something about it a long time ago was the actor Tom Cruise, all the way back in 2005. He had a very famous appearance on "The Today Show." You may remember it. Here it is. 
 

TOM CRUISE: Here we are today where I talk out against drugs and psychiatric abuses of electric shocking people against their will, of drugging children with them not knowing the effects of these drugs. Do you know what Adderall is? Do you know Ritalin? Do you know now that Ritalin is a street drug? Do you understand that?  

MATT LAUER: Aren't there examples and might not Brooke Shields be an example of someone who benefited from one of those drugs? 

CRUISE: All it does is mask the problem and if you understand the history of it, it masks the problem. That's what it does. That's all it does. You're not getting to the reason why. There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance. Drugs aren't the answer that these drugs are very dangerous. They're mind-altering antipsychotic drugs and there are ways of doing it without that so that we don't end up in a brave new world. 

So, Cruise said a few things. One, maybe you shouldn't trust the pharma companies and just hand your children whatever they're producing and hope for the best. Two, there's no such thing as a chemical imbalance in your brain that causes depression. He said that and three, these drugs mask the real problems. You're suffering for a real reason the drugs can't fix.

Provocative statements. How did the country respond to this? Well, everyone in the media agreed "Tom Cruise is crazy. He's in a cult. Shut up." A lot of people thought that. We may even have thought that, but then more information kept coming out that made Tom Cruise look a little less crazy. 

 

In 2015, researchers from the scientific journal BMJ found that, "Some birth defects occur 2 to 3.5 times more frequently" a lot more frequently, "among the infants of women treated with (SSRIs) early in pregnancy." Wow. That's a huge problem ignored. 

In the same journal in 2020, researchers found that "post-SSRI sexual dysfunction is underrecognized and can be debilitating both psychologically and physically." Well, that's kind of a problem, too. If it steals your sex drive, maybe it's stealing your soul. No, ignore it. Only cult members care.

Then last year, researchers in Sweden found that "There may be an increased hazard of violent crime during SSRI medication in a small group of patients. It may exist across age groups and throughout treatment periods and it possibly persists for up to 12 weeks after treatment discontinuation." 

So, even after you stop taking the drugs, you may be impotent, infertile, violent, but at least the drugs cure the chemical imbalance in your brain that causes your depression. That was the selling point. What a great piece of marketing. You've got a chemical imbalance in your brain. You need these drugs and so hundreds of millions of prescriptions every year for these drugs. Well, in what seemed like news to us, last week we learned that actually SSRIs don't cure a chemical imbalance in your brain.  
 

So, the acronym SSRI stands for Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor. The theory was, has been for 30 years, that depressed people have an imbalance of serotonin in their brains. They have a chemical imbalance. If you give them more serotonin, then they become less depressed and happy. They're less likely to kill themselves. Right, but it turns out that serotonin deficiencies are not the reason people get depressed. That's not just a guess. It's now officially science. This new finding comes from University College London just completed a long and huge study on the relationship between depression and serotonin. It was published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.  
 

Here's what the lead author of that study, Joanna Moncrieff, said about the findings. "I think we can safely say, after a vast amount of research conducted over several decades, there is no convincing evidence that depression is caused by serotonin abnormalities, particularly by lower levels or reduced activity of serotonin." 

 

What? That was the whole premise of the drug, which virtually the entire American population was taking on their doctor's advice and by the way, the drug companies made billions off those drugs.  

So, first we were told that SSRIs would save lives. Now we learn they don't actually work as intended. In fact, the whole idea behind the drug was completely wrong. And yet, and here is the best part, people are ignoring this news and the drugs are still being prescribed. How can that happen in a country based on science? Well, as it turns out, and this is the real point, that happens all the time. 
 

 

[Ariel]

@methuselah

Thank you for posting the transcript!

A. 

[Oaktree1]

Prof Patricia Casey again on the Irish national airwaves today on a 'hard news' show on Newstalk with Kieran Cuddihy

https://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/highlights-from-the-hard-shoulder/do-antidepressants-work

 

Here is the introductory blurb - listening to the podcast might make people very angry so it might not be advisable.  I have written a response not what it will make any difference:-

 

"New research out today is questioning the need for antidepressants, saying they may not actually help with mental illness. Patricia Casey, Consultant Psychiatrist at the Hermitage Clinic and Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry in UCD, joined Kieran to explain how the research might not be all that it seam's."

 

  It was disheartening to listen to the resulting interview which was completely uncritical and did no challenge Casey but that is the Irish media for you.  The journalist Kieran Cuddihy simply asked Casey 'What is the truth?' and swallowed the very clever response that she gave him over the next 5 or so minutes in which she portrayed Joanna Moncrieff as part of a group of  extremist outliers and claimed that people might not know the 'science' and that there plenty of systematic reviews that show that anti depressants do work - all these assertions were unchallenged in one of Ireland's mainstream radio news shows.  That's what passes for journalism in this country - at least in the UK Joanna Moncrieff got a chance to speak on mainstream news shows that actually listened to what she had to say.  

 

[Mirtazapine20mg]

16 hours ago, Oaktree1 said:

That's what passes for journalism in this country

Just heard the interview Oak. How I hate the 'critical psychiatry' label. It is nothing but a mainstream conspiracy theory, and the narrative behind the theory is this: There is a group of people (the critical psychiatry bunch) who in some coordinated way and with evil intentions tries to bring down modern psychiatry because they have brainwashed each other into believing unscientific stupid stuff. It is argumentum ergo decedo and it is the lowest of the low.

 

The frighting thing is that it is a psychiatry professor, normally a person of merit, who uses such arguments. You can forgive this kind of talk on a pub 11 pm on friday. But in mainstream media on a monday?

 

[Mirtazapine20mg]

Btw @Oaktree1, we have exactly the same problem in Denmark. Here a psychiatrist named Poul Videbech plays the same public role as Patricia Casey. When Munkholm et al (here) tried to replicate Cipriani et al (here) and couldn't, Videbech immediately went to media with a rebuttle (here, danish). When Jacobsen et al published their big meta study of SSRIs (here) and couldn't find any relevant positive effects but only side effects of SSRIs, Videbech again went to the media with a rebuttle (here, danish). On is own web page he writes that no commercial interests influences his work as a psychiatrist or as a scientist. Videbech writes that his research grants from the Lundbeck Fundation do not have a commercial influence his work, because the Lundbeck Foundation has no commercial interest in the pharmaceutical corporation Lundbeck (here, danish). In reality the Lundbeck Foundation owns 70% of the stocks in the Corporation Lundbeck (here). Every Lundbeck research grant is channeled through the Foundation. 

 

Is my chronic nausea caused by the above or my prior use of Citalopram and Brintellix (both Lundbeck)? 

[Oaktree1]

@Mirtazapine20mg

 

And the first study that you refer you seems to have been done in 2017 - Prof Irvine Kirsch's book 'The Emperor's New Drug's' which published research that debunked the chemical imbalance theory and concluded that the positive effects of anti depressants came from placebo, came out in 2009.  But there was a successful fight back against that from the European Psychiatric Association in 2012 and all it took was a statement from Jeffrey Liebermann the American Psychiatric's Association President Elect to rubbish Kirsch's research at that time. 

 

Here is the statement: - 

'"Dr. Kirsch is mistaken and confused, and he's ideologically biased in his thinking. He is conducting an analysis and interpreting the data to support his ideologically biased perspective. What he is concluding is inaccurate, and what he is communicating is misleading to people and potentially harmful to those who really suffer from depression and would be expected to benefit from antidepressant medication. To say that antidepressants are no better than placebo is just plain wrong."

 

Paul Videbech's argument is more subtle as he appears to 'accept' some of the research.  Casey does that too in the interview stating that she does not support the over prescribing of anti depressants for mere 'unhappiness'.  So they co-opt some of the data to make themselves appear reasonable in the same way that mainstream psychiatry has begun to pay lip service in the past few years to the bio psycho social model to enhance its credibility.  

 

It's all just a matter of power - Casey and her ilk across the world like Videbech in Denmark and  Insel the ex head of the NIMH in the US with his ridiculous new book 'Healing' - a justification of  mainstream psychiatry's behaviour in the last few decades  - have position and power.  Having position and power, they have more access to the media to determine the narrative that gets out to the public.  George Orwell said it best in 'Animal Farm' - 'If Napoleon says it, it must be right' .  Most people are sheep and will follow the narrative put out by those with power.

[Altostrata]

merged similar topics

[Oaktree1]

A group of psychiatrists (40 in all) in the UK are attempting to have the study on which this thread is based axed.

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12206165/Demands-flawed-study-cast-doubts-effectiveness-antidepressants-AXED.html

[FeralCatman]

Not surprising given that the last name of one of those opposed to the study is 'Nutt'. Also not surprising to see them defending their careers, reptuation, retirement, boat, motorcycle, vacations, big homes, kids college education, golf club membership, etc. etc. One of the reasons I have read about for the shortage of psychiatrists is that many medical students do their psych rotations and realize it is a buch of bunk and then choose another medical specialty.

[Catina7]

27 minutes ago, FeralCatman said:

Not surprising given that the last name of one of those opposed to the study is 'Nutt'.

 

😂 😹😁👍

 

28 minutes ago, FeralCatman said:

One of the reasons I have read about for the shortage of psychiatrists is that many medical students do their psych rotations and realize it is a buch of bunk and then choose another medical specialty.

 

Wow, makes sense. Don't blame them at all!  It's the only medical speciality that combines a guessing game and Russian Roulette.