Is Clinical Depression A Biochemical Disease?

Depression is a biochemical disease passed on through the genes. Did you know that? Well, that's what the drug companies tell us and surely they must be correct, mustn't they? Well no, actually, they mustn't.

Suppose you have a solution. Any solution. The only way you can sell this solution is to find a problem. Depression's a huge problem, so in this particular case it's a problem to do with your health. Is chemical depression a biochemical disease? Yes, say the drug companies, and through massive and intensive advertising campaigns, they've brainwashed everyone into believing it.

So, not only do they have a problem for which they have a ready made solution. They also have most people believing this business of depression being passed on through the genes and that the solution with which the drug companies have developed will cure them of their ills. This is all very convenient and profitable for the drug companies.

We're told time after time in the media and television that there's real scientific evidence to back this up. But there isn't.

Let me tell you another secret. These newer Selective Serotonin Uptake Inhibitors, (SSRIs); drugs like Prozac, Lustral, Cipramil, etc., have been tested and shown not to work any better than the older tricyclic antidepressants. No one antidepressant works any better than the other. The pharmaceutical boys haven't been terribly forthcoming in all this, have they?

The advertisements on television especially, bang on about serotonin and norepinephrine. Depression, they say, is caused through a lack of serotonin in the brain of someone who's genetically predisposed. So the newer SSRIs, we're told, inhibit the reuptake of serotonin after it's been released in brain synapses.

Serotonin, as I'm sure you know, is the 'happy' chemical we have in our brains. Therefore, the more serotonin we have, the happier we shall be. Now this is fine, and you'd think that lowering the serotonin and dopamine levels in the brains of people not suffering depression would make them depressed, wouldn't you?

Well, it doesn't! Even a rapid lowering of serotonin doesn't make a scrap of difference. The top researcher, Irving Kirsch, calls this the final 'nail in the coffin' of the biomedical/low serotonin theory for depression. So let's straighten this out.

Billions of dollars have been spent by hundreds of millions of people for -- what? Snake oil? And here's something that'll shoot your shirt off your back. In France, they market a drug named Tianeptine, which is sold as Stablon. It was developed -- you won't believe this -- to lower the level of serotonin. Here's the kicker! It works just as well as any other antidepressant or placebo.

All this is like an episode of 'Believe It Or Not'