You’ve been lied to about mental health | Joanna Moncrieff
Joanna Moncrieff takes aim at the pervasive myth that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.
Is there any reliable evidence for the chemical imbalance hypothesis?
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For decades, we have been told that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain and that antidepressants work by addressing this imbalance. Millions have decided to take antidepressants on this basis. Join psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff as she argues that this is false and that the “chemical imbalance” story is completely unsupported by the evidence, and explores how the power of human bias can shape what passes as scientific knowledge.
#mentalhealth #psychology #psychiatry #alternativemedicine
Joanna Moncrieff is Professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry at University College London, and a consultant psychiatrist for the NHS. She is also a founding member and co-chairperson of the Critical Psychiatry Network. Her most recent book is Chemically Imbalanced: The Making and Unmaking of the Serotonin Myth.
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24 Comments
Finally truth is breaking through Big Pharma's gatekeepers like the New York Times which is only reluctantly admitting to problems whose magnitude they're still trying to downplay.
Ssri,for me are a Hell of sleeplessness and brain zapps.
Does chemistry hold the key to treating depression, or should we instead seek more holistic and natural approaches?
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SNRI's have changed the game for me. I thought I had depression, and after trying SSRI's I would have some relief for months and then I would relapse.
Turns out I had ADHD all along and SNRIs have literally saved my life
I believe that mental illnesses, and especially depression, alter not only body's hormonal and nervous system but also the entire body's chemical makeup. Therefore, it's essential to restore a healthy lifestyle rather than just neutralize the symptoms. I think antidepressants can be a small part of therapy, serving as a complementary and temporary measure.
My favourite part of the video was where she said that the Antidepressant alternative is to just deal with your emotions 🙏🏼 dunno why I didn't think of that.
Are they still selling doctor degrees from the university where she bought hers? Asking for a friend.
The pharmaceutical industry is basically just the drug dealers on the corner with the backing of the government. They deal drugs and the more addictive they are the more profitable they are. It’s been this way since the beginning if you cure something people don’t keep coming back for more.
Most of us spend the vast majority of our lives doing something we would never do if we didn’t have to make money. Of course we are depressed. These drugs are just to keep the slaves in line.
"Get busy. Keep busy. It's the cheapest kind of medicine there is on this earth – and one of the best." Dale Carnegie
This is valuable information but I wish you would change your tag line away from "You've been lied to."
A relatively new phenomenon is peddling anti depressants and anti psychotics as "off label" sleep medications.
Totally agree Joanna! I tried many different anti anxiety tablets for over 20 years and the "side effects" just added to the problem. From nausea, tension, increased aggression, shaking, sweating, grinding teeth, suicidal thoughts, extreme headaches, insomnia, dizziness, palpitations, IBS, constipation, paranoia etc. They don't work!! Pharmaceutical Companies are making huge profits from these products!! That is why they continue to prescribe these drugs and turn a blind eye to their ineffectiveness!! They put "Profit" before the wellbeing of people.
if psilocybin was legal, we could grow our own medicine for a few cents per dose. There are no side effects and the benefits are documented.
Thats why pharmaceuticals companies shouldn't be allowed to advertise at all
Here's food for thought: There's a whole grift going on in the wellness space encouraging people to question consensus medical opinions. This irresponsible woman is one of those grifters. She is profiting immensely off of her overextrapolated conclusions, and will continue to ride the speaking-circuit high until she is either discredited in a Jubilee debate, or sued back into making an honest living.
Oh here we go.. thé I’m being lied to about mental illness grifters out in full force
Joanna Moncrieff is a crank
The biochemical-genetic reductive model of ‘understanding’ mental health, is most of all horrendously individualising. It forcefully decouples “the individual” from his/her own life history as well as any and all human, economic or cultural relation to the outside world – for better and worse.
Words like healing, health, wholesome or holistic all point to an awareness of “being whole”. No wonder Jung or Lacan were seen as ‘rioters’ in their time, or any deeper psychoanalysis politicised as “dangerous”.
Yes, it IS dangerous to become aware of, sensitive to and ultimately heterodox to any naturalised social imperative. About oneself, and about all that isn’t oneself – how time and complex aspects of life and culture puts even “free choice” into doubt.
A possible rebellion against individualism, by the individual, is an emancipatory idea taken too far for any powerful entity – so “treat”, don’t try to ‘heal’…?
I'm sorry but this is really a low level of science and an example of how thinking outside of the box doesn't necessarily mean it's sound thinking
What kind of causation do you see in the finding that people predicting they have received the drug and not the placebo report a bettering in their symptoms? Is that not obvious if the drug shows efficacy in the patient? It's like saying people who have received a new cancer drug are more likely to have predicted that they have received the drug instead of placebo. Well yes because the drug is working. How can you argument with that against the validity of double blinded clinical studies?
Interesting material but the lady isn't good at presenting it.
Big Pharma is in the trillion-dollar business of selling lifelong treatments, which is how we got to the pill-for-every-problem world we live in today. Mental health is just the tip of the iceberg. Which is not to say that medicine isn’t needed in this world, just that the industry has a strong incentive to push medicine on all of us.
Sure, we don't know everything about the brain, and a lot of early psychiatry was a bit of a stab in the dark situation, but there are different kinds of anti-depression drugs which work in different ways, and many I am sure have seen that not all drugs work for all people, and you cannot only rely on medication, even if it does help a lot. I don't think this person has dealt with depression in their own life, which does make it hard for her to understand. I am all for being critical, but this kind of rhetoric leans a bit towards "we must exorcise the demon" or "oh, you're just not trying hard enough, honey" which is a gross misunderstanding of these conditions and perpetuates harmful stereotypes.
Such a wildly irresponsible video title lmao. What a joke this channel is becoming