Depression

Confessions of a Renegade Psychiatrist

Written By:

Dr. Kelly Brogan, M.D.

Depression is Not A Serotonin Deficiency

Thanks to direct-to-consumer advertising and complicit FDA endorsement of evidence-less claims, the public has been sold an insultingly oversimplified tale about the underlying driver of depression.  Here's how we know depression is not a serotonin deficiency corrected by Zoloft:

• There has never been a single study, in humans, to validate the theory of low serotonin in depression.  Low levels are found in a minority of patients.
• An antidepressant marketed as Stablon, increases reuptake of serotonin (reducing serotonin activity) and appears to be equally effective as those that decrease it or have no effect on it at all.
• Manipulation of serotonin levels (depletion or enhancement) do not consistently result in a depressive syndrome.
• These medications are used to treat an impossibly non-specific and broad array of illnesses from obsessive compulsive disorder to anorexia to premenstrual dysphoria to bipolar depression to irritable bowel syndrome.
• Antidepressants of all categories seems to work about the same regardless of their presumed mechanism of action with about 73% of the response unrelated to pharmacologic activity.

You might wonder: Well, then how is it that antidepressants are a billion dollar industry and I have all these friends who are so much better on them? more.....please read the Whole article!

more: http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/confessions-renegade-psychiatrist