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Researchers cast doubt on the use of anti-depressant medications that are recommended to an average of 14% of adults in the Western world.
Scientists in Britain have cast doubt on the use of anti-depressant medication after a large study “found no clear evidence” that low levels of serotonin are responsible for depression, as recommended by modern science.
Prescriptions for anti-depressants have risen dramatically since the 1990s, with one in six adults and around 2% of teenagers in Britain taking such medication.
Millions of people around the world regularly use heavy-duty medications that target chemical imbalances believed to be the cause of the disorder, writes the British network The Guardian.
“Many people take anti-depressants because they have been led to believe that their depression has a biochemical cause, but recent studies suggest that this belief is not based on clear evidence,” says study author Joanna Moncrieff, professor of psychiatry at the University College London and consultant psychiatrist to the NHS public health foundation.
“It is always difficult to prove a negative fact, but I believe I can say with certainty that decades of studies have not produced evidence that depression is caused by abnormal levels of serotonin, much less by low levels or reduced activity of serotonin. her”, writes the British doctor.
“Thousands of people already suffer from the side effects of anti-depressants including severe addiction when they stop taking them, and yet the number of prescriptions from doctors continues to grow. We believe this situation is fueled by the false belief that depression is a chemical imbalance, but it is time to inform the public that this belief is not based on evidence.”
Extensive review of existing studies reveals that depression is unlikely to be caused by chemical imbalances, so people should be made aware of other ways to treat it.
Other British experts from the Royal College of Psychiatrists cast doubt on the new conclusions, urging people not to stop taking their medication, insisting that anti-depressants are effective.
Most anti-depressant medications are serotonin-releasing enhancers, known as ‘SSRIs’, which are believed to correct relatively low levels of this hormone.
The latest study, published in the journal ‘Molecular Psychiatry’, looked at criteria for thousands of people and found that studies of serotonin and its components in the blood or cerebral fluids did not reveal differences between people diagnosed with depression and healthy ones.
The authors studied hundreds of subjects with artificially lowered serotonin levels, which did not produce depression in healthy volunteers.
Other studies looked at stressful life events and found that the more such events a person had experienced, the more likely they were to become depressed, indicating the importance of external factors in the condition.
“We believe that patients should not be told that depression is caused by low serotonin or chemical imbalances, and we should not be led to believe that anti-depressant medications work by targeting these unproven disorders,” Moncrieff writes.
“We don’t know exactly what anti-depressants do to the brain, and giving people this misinformation prevents them from making informed decisions about whether or not to take anti-depressants.”
While a spokesman for the British college of psychiatrists “Royal College of Psychiatrists” said: “Antidepressants are an effective recommendation for depression as well as a range of mental and physical conditions, so we do not recommend stopping taking them based on this study.”
But consultant Dr Michael Bloomfield, a clinical researcher at University College London, who was not involved in the study, said: “Many of us know that paracetamol helps with headaches, but I don’t think anyone believes that headaches are caused by a lack of of paracetamol in the head. This seems to be the logic applied so far to depression and medications to treat it.”/ TheGuardian// Prepared by: Andi Lamko/
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