… The recent study, essentially trashing prescribing SSRI’s for depression, has indeed gone viral in right wing media.
But as EJ Dickson notes in a very good article, the author of the paper has a long history bashing SSRI’s and the categorization of mental health, in general, as medical condition that needs psychiatric treatment.
In fact, her work has been heavily promoted by an organization established by the Church of Scientology.
Not only that, scientists have also noted that her study offers nothing new, beyond another study of studies.
It’s been quite awhile since the “chemical balance theory” was in favor.
As I noted in my longer reply, medical researchers have found compelling data favoring far more complex mechanisms by which mood disorders develop.
Further, it’s been years since anyone has said that SSRI’s help by restoring chemical imbalances.
They seem to help by reducing systemic inflammation and working in other neurological ways.
Her conclusion — that SSRI’s shouldn’t be prescribed because depression isn’t the result of chemical imbalances– is very odd, considering that’s not the way scientists think they work.
Antidepressants, indisputably, work for many.
And there’s another very odd phenomenon, at work.
If you can’t trust anything from an academic journal (as many critics of antidepressants argue), then why tout the article, published in an academic journal, as evidence in favor of your position?
In other words if, by definition, the establishment is “lying to you,” why rely on something coming from the establishment as your evidence?
It’s a deep hypocrisy from the anti-pharma crowd.
When I first read the paper, I was deeply saddened because it was so narrow in its focus, and so erroneously dramatic in its conclusion, and I suspected that its splashy anti-pharma focus would have far reaching consequences for a church that is already skeptical of medical intervention for mental health.
Pastors these days frequently muse that they feel Tucker Carlson is the real pastor of their church — that what he says drives the church’s conversations. Not what Christ says, not what the Bible says, certainly not what the pastor himself says.
And now that Carlson has latched onto this paper, you can bet skeptical churches and Christians will be even more intransigent on the issue.
The tragic thing is that intransigence is killing people. Literally.
Church should be a place of comfort, not a place of shame, not a place that turns people from life-saving medical care.
Sadly, a lot of evangelical churches in the United States don’t look like that anymore — particularly, as they turn increasingly conspiratorial about anything related to pharmaceutical companies.
And remember, those “natural” alternatives people are talking about at church?
The profit margins on those unproven treatments are often much, much larger than any antidepressant out there (Goop’s story is the most obvious in this saga) .
Folks are getting rich off the backs of complaining, “Big Pharma just wants to make money.”
The “all-natural” proponents are plying unsupported means of treatment, and making a lot of money off victims of this disease, to boot.
That doesn’t mean SSRI’s are right for everybody.
But it’s best to talk with a medical professional, because they’re the ones who’ve devoted their lives to understanding disease, and so…
Find a psychiatrist here.
Find a therapist here.
