
Marketing the myth of serotonin, the ‘happy chemical’ (2015) - chesterfield
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/marketing-the-myth-of-serotonin-the-happy-chemical/article24457686/
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ineedasername
First, what is right in the article: It's unclear exactly how SSRI drugs work
and the precise role the serotonin plays in regulating mood (and therefore
depression)

But then there is so much wrong here it's hard to know where to begin. I'll go
with the basics though: The article relies primarily on two doctors, one who
is at odds with the consensus in the field and another based on an editorial,
not a peer-reviewed piece of research.

In fact, peer reviewed research directly contradicts some of the opinions,
such as stating it's unknown if SSRI medications raise or lower serotonin. It
is known, they do raise it [0] (and many other pieces of research to support
this)

Undoubtedly pharmaceutical companies have made quite a bit of serotonin and
drugs that influence it, but calling serotonin a "myth" is, at best, overreach
and at worst click-bait.

[0]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4921409/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4921409/)

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DanBC
"30+ years of psychopharm texts and not a single mention of "chemical
imbalance". If you are reading a book that includes that term - burn it. It
was written by an antipsychiatrist."

[https://twitter.com/dawso007/status/1108920829344186368](https://twitter.com/dawso007/status/1108920829344186368)

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fineIllregister
Happily. But what do I do with the psychiatrists who used that "chemical
imbalance" to describe my experience and then prescribed me SSRIs? Burning
them is illegal.

I'm sure it's comforting for the tweet author to pretend that harmful concepts
come exclusively from outside his profession, but that's just not true.

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shdh
Modern medicine is all about ignoring root causes and prescribing to mask
symptoms.

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jazoom
That's a ridiculous thing to say about modern medicine. I can only assume you
are just unaware of what most of medicine is. I'm a medical practitioner.

