Drug regulator thinks it’s reasonable to mislead people about chemical imbalance in depression

In a reply to a letter from Peter Gøtzsche, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has made clear that it has no current plans to remove the references to chemical imbalance in the Patient Information Leaflets (PILs) of antidepressants (see reply). A previous reply to a freedom of information request has helped to clarify the history of the introduction of this term into such PILs.

The chemical imbalance theory of depression has never been more than a hypothesis (see eg. previous post). The trouble with MHRA maintaining its position is that it gives credence to the idea that the hypothesis has been proven, which is clearly not the case. It seems willing to let people be misled about the nature of depression. Its bias in promoting antidepressants needs to be exposed.