The article seems to say that lower levels of serotonin is not the /cause/ of the depression. But it doesn't change the fact that most studies seem to conclude that one of the things we can determine in people who suffer from depression is that they have lower levels of serotonin, and in some of those cases SSRIs help.
Not all forms of depression are caused by serotonin, and anti-depressants may not always be the solution.
Again, my point is we know how SSRIs work and what they do. What we do not know is why some people have lower levels of serotonin or why they absorb it too quickly compared to... non depressed people.
The issue with depression is that its a huge complicated thing that we know a lot about, but at the same time, we also know very little.
I would agree that we over perscribe medication for depression as we do for MANY different things. In Asia, antibiotics is handed out like candy when people are sick. You have the common cold, boom you get antibiotics, despite the fact that colds are caused by virus, and antibiotics only helps with bacterial infections not viral invections.
The US has a major problem with big phama where people can be perscribed medicine for many things, and then have side-affects resulting in more things being perscribed. Painkills for injury > painkillers causing depression > Prozac, Prozac causes insomnia > sleeping pills, sleeping pills causes you to lose sexual drive > viagra, viagra causes you to gain weight > apatite suppresents. It goes on and on.
I wonder if a big part of the problem is that depression and other mental illnesses are slightly unusual in that they are categorised based on symptoms rather than underlying biology, which are poorly understood. As a diagnosis it’s about as useful as ‘chest pains’
Maybe (I am not a clinical psychiatrist) there are 1, 10, or 100 very different underlying causes which would indicate different treatment if only they were better understood. But nonetheless the existing classification / ontology is established and will be hard to displace.
Not all forms of depression are caused by serotonin, and anti-depressants may not always be the solution.
Again, my point is we know how SSRIs work and what they do. What we do not know is why some people have lower levels of serotonin or why they absorb it too quickly compared to... non depressed people.
The issue with depression is that its a huge complicated thing that we know a lot about, but at the same time, we also know very little.
I would agree that we over perscribe medication for depression as we do for MANY different things. In Asia, antibiotics is handed out like candy when people are sick. You have the common cold, boom you get antibiotics, despite the fact that colds are caused by virus, and antibiotics only helps with bacterial infections not viral invections.
The US has a major problem with big phama where people can be perscribed medicine for many things, and then have side-affects resulting in more things being perscribed. Painkills for injury > painkillers causing depression > Prozac, Prozac causes insomnia > sleeping pills, sleeping pills causes you to lose sexual drive > viagra, viagra causes you to gain weight > apatite suppresents. It goes on and on.