Tag: chemical imbalance theory

The Serotonin Zombie: Authors of New Study Try to Breathe New...

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Despite new claims that their study provides "clear evidence" linking serotonin and depression, their data actually supports the opposite conclusion: serotonin levels did not correlate with depression.

Dr. Pies’ Non-Apology

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Dr. Pies' summary of Schroder et al's study is misleading. In fact, the researchers found that the more times a person was hospitalized, the more likely they were to believe the chemical imbalance myth.

12 Essential Facts About Psychiatry

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With these twelve facts, you are equipped to defend against the misinformation propagated by academic psychiatry, Big Pharma, and the laypeople they target. You are encouraged to use this knowledge to (firmly but respectfully) challenge statements you hear in passing or from loved-ones such as “He is mentally ill,” “I have a chemical imbalance and these drugs help correct it,” or any other commonly accepted falsehoods that the above facts expose.

Pies’ Polemic and the Question of Theories in Psychiatry, Again

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If the "Chemical Imbalance Theory of Mental Disorder" is a mirage, if not a frank deception, then what theory are psychiatrists using to justify prescribing their drugs? What is the current accepted theory or model of mental disorder by which psychiatry justifies not just its extensive and unequalled powers, but its very existence?

The Chemical Imbalance Theory: Dr. Pies Returns, Again

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Psychiatrist Ronald Pies published a recent piece in the Psychiatric Times titled "Debunking the Two Chemical Imbalance Myths, Again." The subtitle: "A little learning is a dangerous thing." And indeed it is. But not nearly as dangerous as a psychiatrist with a head full of spurious diagnoses and a ready prescription pad.

The Chemical Imbalance Theory of Mental Disorders

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In this video for AdvancingMentalHealth.org, Jeff Baker provides a detailed overview and critique of the chemical imbalance theory of mental illness.

We Still Buy the Lie That Chemical Imbalances Cause Depression

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From Quartz: Despite its inaccuracy, the chemical imbalance theory of mental illness continues to persist in public consciousness. The prevalence of this myth may be...

Dear Mental Health Professionals: Please Stop Defending Yourselves and Listen

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Most people who enter the mental health field do so with good intentions. But when it comes to opening up to ideas or information that challenge your worldview or how you conduct your business, on the whole, you’re doing a pretty poor job.

House on Fire: A ‘Mental Health Literacy’ Parable

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This fictitious conversation between a client and therapist highlights a number of problematic views and practices commonly encountered in the mental health system. Although they may not “blame the brain” as often as psychiatrists, many therapists have also adopted the DSM-based biomedical framework in their work.

Would Discovering the Biology of “Mental Illness” Explain its Cause?

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Researchers are constantly hunting for chemical variations in people with emotional problems. But even if chemical differences are someday found, why would we assume that these chemical processes cause abnormal behaviors or moods, as opposed to being mere correlates of them at the chemical level?

Mainstream Western Psychiatry: Science or Non-science?

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Because it is such an important question, because people's lives depend on this and psychiatry has a record of getting it seriously wrong, we need to be sure we can trust their claim. In practice, is it true that biological psychiatry has the science?

Who Will Guard the Guardians of Psychiatry?

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The assertion that the so-called antidepressants are being over-prescribed implies that there is a correct and appropriate level of prescribing and that depression is a chronic illness (just like diabetes). It has been an integral part of psychiatry's message that although depression might have been triggered by an external event, it is essentially an illness residing within the person's neurochemistry. The issue is not whether people should or shouldn't take pills. The issue is psychiatry pushing these dangerous serotonin-disruptive chemicals on people, under the pretense that they have an illness.

A Worldwide Epidemic – The Misuse of Anti-Depressant Medications

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Not all people who have letters after their names are actually "gods" or even people who have any special powers to know things about us more than we can learn about ourselves, about our own bodies, and our own minds. Blindly following what someone says we need to be doing for our own health (mental or physical) and well-being just because they have a white jacket on (so to speak) is usually not in our best interests.

The Psychiatry Sandcastle Continues to Crumble

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Psychiatry would long since have gone the way of phrenology and mesmerism but for the financial support it receives from the pharmaceutical industry. But the truth has a way of trickling out. Here are five recent stories that buck the psychiatry-friendly stance that has characterized the mainstream media for at least the past 50 years.

Feeling Good with Narcotics Now “Evidence” of Opioid Deficiency: The Chemical...

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We have lost our ability to tolerate distress, to find meaning in emotion, and purpose in experience. As the sociologist Nicolas Rose has noted, we have recoded our moods in terms of neurochemistry. Emotions no longer have context. They are aberrations in neurochemistry. I’m no longer hurting because I’m lonely, but because I’m running low on endorphins. Buprenorphine for depressive despair reinforces the belief that emotions should be obliterated, and can only be done so through modulating biochemistry.

Smashing the Neurotransmitter Myth: How & Why Antidepressants Cause Suicides &...

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Let us put the final nail in the coffin of the neurotransmitter myth of big Pharma and the APA. The idea that psychiatric issues come from some quantitative soup of neurotransmitters in the synapses of the brain is completely wrong. Yes there are neurotransmitters in the brain. However, serotonin does not create symptoms.

Ronald Pies Doubles Down (And Why We Should Care)

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This past Saturday, I was on my way back from Europe to Boston, and while on a stop in Iceland, I checked my email and was directed to a new blog by Ronald Pies in Psychiatric Times, in which he once again revisited the question of whether American psychiatry, and the American Psychiatric Association (APA), ever promoted the idea that chemical imbalances caused mental disorders. And just like when I read his 2011 writings on this subject, I found myself wondering what to make of his post. Why was he so intent on maintaining psychiatry’s “innocence?” And why did it matter?

Book Review: Depression Delusion by Terry Lynch, MD, MA

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In this truly remarkable — and meticulously researched — volume, Dr. Lynch annihilates psychiatry's cherished chemical imbalance theory of depression. Every facet of this theory, which the author correctly calls a delusion, is critically analyzed and found wanting. Please read Depression Delusion, keep it close to hand for reference, and encourage others to read it also. Ask your library to buy a copy. The spurious chemical imbalance theory is now so widely accepted that it will take enormous efforts to dislodge it. In any debate on this matter, Dr. Lynch's book will, quite literally, put the facts at your fingertips.

The Spurious Chemical Imbalance Theory is Still Alive and Well

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The promotion of the chemical imbalance theory did occur, and continues to occur, and is a most shameful chapter in psychiatry's history.  It is arguably one of the most destructive, far-reaching, and profitable hoaxes in history. I could not begin to estimate the number of clients I've talked to over the years who told me that their psychiatrists had told them they had a chemical imbalance in their brains, and that they needed to take the pills for life to correct this imbalance. Even today, I regularly receive emails from readers contesting the assertions in my posts and telling me in no uncertain terms that they have chemical imbalances in their brains that cause their problems.

Psychiatry DID Promote the Chemical Imbalance Theory

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At the present time psychiatry, because of intense pressure from its critics, is retreating somewhat from the chemical imbalance theory. But instead of acknowledging that this notion was flawed, that they knew it was flawed, and that they promoted it for self-gain, they are claiming that they never really said it in the first place.

Psychiatry’s Manufactured Consent: Chemical Imbalance Theory and the Antidepressant Explosion

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The title of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s book Manufacturing Consent derives from presidential advisor Walter Lippmann’s phrase “the manufacture of consent”—a necessity for Lippmann, who believed that the general public is incompetent in discerning what’s truly best for them, and so their opinion must be molded by a benevolent elite who do know what’s best for them. Why has the American public not heard psychiatrists in positions of influence on the mass media debunk the chemical imbalance theory? Big Pharma’s corruption of psychiatry is only part of the explanation. Many psychiatrists, acting in the manner of a benevolent elite, did not alert the general public because they believed that the chemical imbalance theory was a useful fiction to get patients to accept their mental illness and take their medication. In other words, the chemical imbalance theory was an excellent way to manufacture consent.