Exploding myths about depression

Joanna Moncrieff has blogged on the recent paper in Molecular Psychiatry, in which she was the lead author, which has created considerable media publicity (see previous post). She explains what she thinks the implications of the paper are.

I very much welcome this work. However, I do remain perhaps more sceptical than Jo about the evidence. For example, I am not convinced about what she says about the emotional numbing (see eg. previous post) and physical dependency effects of SSRIs (see eg. another previous post).

I also think she is too generous to the idea that even though the serotonin theory of depression is wrong, that there may still be a biological explanation of depression. Don’t get me wrong! Of course depression is due to the brain. That’s mere tautology. But depression is a personal experience. It doesn’t make sense to look for it in the brain (see eg. previous post).