The number of people taking antidepressants has increased by over 400% since the early '90s. In a certain light, this could be perceived as a success for public health; it is clear, for example, that tens of millions of people have found antidepressants to be effective. What's less clear iswhy these medications work, but decades of research on the subject suggest that an explanation parroted in ad campaigns and physicians' offices alike – that depression can be chalked up to low levels of serotonin in the brain – is insufficient.
"Chemical imbalance is sort of last-century thinking. It's much more complicated than that,"Dr. Joseph Coyle, a professor of neuroscience at Harvard Medical School, told NPR in 2012. "It's really an outmoded way of thinking."
This is the story of how pharmaceutical companies and psychiatrists convinced the public that depression was the result of a simple chemical imbalance – and how scientists, patients, and psychiatrists are working to piece together the more complicated truth.
by Levi Gadye, i09 | Read more:
Image: uncredited
