Research: Antidepressants Don’t Work and May Make Depression Worse
[Editor’s Note: This article is about recent research on
the chemical causes of depression and the use of SSRI antidepressants to
address these causes. There are many other types of antidepressants
available, and antidepressants, including SSRI’s, do help many people
through depression. This research, and this article, simply highlight
another perspective and another side of this important story, and should
not be intended as medical advice for anyone.]
At present, over 10% of people over the age of 12 in the United
States take some type of antidepressant, and depression is the number
one cause of medical disability in both the United States and
Canada. Fighting depression is big business, and financial analysts are
forecasting notable growth in the antidepressant market in coming years,
while yearly sales in the US top $5 billion.
Apparently, the accepted cure for depression is pharmaceutical
antidepressants, typically selective serotonin uptake
inhibitors, SSRI’s.
For the last fifty-plus years, the medical community has based
depression treatment on the scientific reasoning that depression is the
result of a chemical imbalance, or more specifically, “that depression
is related to low levels of serotonin in the gaps between cells in the
brain.” Serotonin is a chemical neurotransmitter associated with
feelings of well-being and happiness, and SSRI antidepressants are
prescribed to “keep the neurotransmitter’s levels high by blocking its
re-absorption into the cells that release it.”[1] This regulates the
amount of serotonin available, and theoretically at least, cures the
chemical root-cause of depression.
