Mm.

If you go up a mountain too quickly, your body can't adapt to lower air pressure at higher bits of the mountain, and you get altitude sickness.

You feel headache, dizziness, joint pain.

It's not the height that gets you, it's the rate at which you go up.

So for example, if you go from sea level to the top of Everest in two days, guaranteed you'll get terrible altitude sickness and, uh, it might even kill you.

If you go from sea level to the top of Everest in two years, your body has lots of time to adapt, you're not gonna get any altitude sickness.

Same as coming off an antidepressant.

Wow.

Civilization, all those things.

Yeah, exactly.

All of these things that are, you know, that, that novels have been written about, that human beings have talked about.

You know, all these complicated words have been boiled down to simple clinical language: depression, generalized anxiety disorder.

And what that medicalization of people's sense of self does is it leads them to medical solutions.

And so now, you know, when people are upset, lonely, lost, grief-stricken, they're told by friends, family, the TV, newspapers, "You've got a medical problem.

Go see a doctor." And doctors, you know, have limited numbers of o- options, and one of those is antidepressants, and so they're very likely to prescribe an antidepressant.

That's higher than I actually thought.

Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET.

of serotonin by changing their diet.

There is no evidence linking low serotonin level or activity with depression.

Our paper dispelling this myth was widely covered in the media because this was news to most of the public who had been led to believe this.

So, if there's no convincing evidence that depression is caused by low serotonin, then antidepressants can't be reversing this underlying chemical cause of depression.

They can't be said to be acting in the same way as antibiotics.

There's now a whole range of other theories about what antidepressants might do, acting on inflammation, causing the growth of new neurons, etc.

And the consequences can sometimes be very unpleasant.

it.Right

Um, but anyway, that was a hypothesis.

It was a legitimate hypothesis, and there's been six decades of research since it was hypothesized in the 1960s.

And to summarize our work and others, essentially there is no big difference between healthy volunteers and depressed people.

If you look at serotonin in their cerebrospinal fluid, in their brains after they die, in their blood, in their urine, their serotonin genes, it essentially comes out as, as no difference between healthy volunteers and depressed people.

And actually, we were not the first to say this.

Our paper got a lot of attention, but it's known-- it's been known for years in academic psychiatry that depression is not caused by something as simple as low serotonin.

... what are other alternatives and actions and steps they could take that would be in a much better direction?

Innately curious?

Yeah, in...

I w-...

I am, but, but, but no, unfortunately it's 'cause I sort of fell down a manhole in the street.

You know, the SSRI manhole.

I guess briefly, you know, I took antidepressants for many years, like one in six adults in the Western world, America, Europe, Australia.

I did a PhD.

it might be uncomfortable, but you had no idea.

How did you get into this topic?

I'd like to say it's because I'm very intellectual and academic.

Innately curious.

I am, but no, unfortunately, it's because I sort of fell down a manhole in the street, you know, the SSRI manhole.

I guess briefly, you know, I took antidepressants for many years, like one in six adults in the Western world, America, Europe, Australia.

I did a PhD.

I trained as a doctor.

And you went into this very intentional, like knowing you might have side effects, knowing it might be uncomfortable, but you had no idea.

... or am I prescient and I've refined this over time by helping my friends?

So you're, you're, you're not crazy.

L- let me, let me tell you how we got here, 'cause it'll make sense of where, how we go to get out of here.

Um, you know, there's been campaigns run in America and around the world, you know, mostly by drug companies, that have convinced the public that they are suffering from chemical imbalances, that if they're feeling sad or they're feeling anxious, it's something that's gone wrong in their brains.

And that has been a very successful campaign that now most of the population believes they've got a chemical imbalance.

And that story began as a hypothesis, you know, in the 1960s by psychiatrists, and the, the short answer is it hasn't panned out.

60 years of research looking in people's blood, cerebral spinal fluid, in their brains, haven't found that depressed people have lower serotonin than healthy volunteers.

Mark, where can people find out more, and, uh, maybe just some closing thoughts from you, um, on the humanity at stake here?

But I-feel, and maybe I'm wrong here, so this is why I'm asking this question, that maybe the prescription pad is whipped out a little bit too quickly for these medications when in fact what might be happening is a normal response to this person's life event.

You're, you're, you're totally, you're totally right, and I'll take it a bit further.

You know, I think that low mood, anxiety, all the kind of unpleasant emotions that we experience have been highly pathologized and medicalized in our modern society.

So exactly, everything you've just mentioned, divorce, relationship fracture, conflict, work issues, death of loved ones, you know, have caused people to feel sad, grief-stricken, depressed throughout history.

But what has happened that's new in the modern world is that drug companies and, you know, the sort of medical establishment has pathologized these things as abnormal.

So I, I said that most of us get depressed or anxious by the age of forty-five.

It's very clear it's in response to life events.

Maybe I really do need this drug now," and then they increase their, their dosage and they ha- just have a hard time getting off that last sort of, you know, it's like they get to 80% of the way or 90% of the way, and then that last 10% just seems insurmountable.

But then as soon as you've got that, Then it triggers the medical treatment, doesn't

it? Exactly.

I think the route into medicalization of these conditions is diagnosis.

As you've alluded to, diagnoses, when you talk about type 2 diabetes, you talk about blood sugar levels, you talk about insulin responses, there's biochemical findings.

Talking about mental health conditions, of course, there are no biochemical findings.

These things are social constructions.

The modern age of psychiatry was unleashed in 1980. in the Northeast of America by the DSM-III Committee.

Yes, totally.