Originally published via Armageddon Prose Substack:
The last couple of years have been hell for the SSRI hustle.
First, in 2022, landmark research shot a God-sized hole in the “low serotonin causes depression” biochemical voodoo narrative, previously accepted uncritically as Gospel and which has sustained the multi-billion-dollar SSRI racket for decades.
Via Molecular Psychiatry:
“Our comprehensive review of the major strands of research on serotonin shows there is no convincing evidence that depression is associated with, or caused by, lower serotonin concentrations or activity. Most studies found no evidence of reduced serotonin activity in people with depression compared to people without, and methods to reduce serotonin availability using tryptophan depletion do not consistently lower mood in volunteers. High quality, well-powered genetic studies effectively exclude an association between genotypes related to the serotonin system and depression, including a proposed interaction with stress. Weak evidence from some studies of serotonin 5-HT1A receptors and levels of SERT points towards a possible association between increased serotonin activity and depression. However, these results are likely to be influenced by prior use of antidepressants and its effects on the serotonin system. The effects of tryptophan depletion in some cross-over studies involving people with depression may also be mediated by antidepressants, although these are not consistently found.”
Bet you didn’t see that report on Fox News or MSNBC!
Unvarnished veritas: the reason you tune into independent media like Armageddon Prose.
Legacy media producers/executives/news actors know how their bread gets buttered, and it’s not by informing their audience; it’s by selling (patented) erectile dysfunction and depression drugs wall-to-wall on every commercial break and keeping their mouths shut about the industry’s lies and abuses in between said commercial breaks.
Now, in research published late last year, we learn that psychotherapy alone not only beats antidepressants alone for combatting depression, but that it beats the combination of both!
In other words, antidepressants are worse than useless for treating depression in tandem with psychotherapy.
“The results showed that antidepressant exposure significantly increased the risk of suicide and suicide attempt when compared with no antidepressant usage among children and adolescents…
Among the antidepressants, SSRI use was associated with an increased risk of suicide and suicide attempt…
In addition, the risk of suicide and suicide attempt between SSRIs and other antidepressants was similar…
Clinicians should evaluate carefully their patients and be cautious with patients at risk to have treatment emergence or worsening of suicidal ideation (TESI/TWOSI) when prescribing antidepressants to children and young patients.
Thirty-four relevant RCTs were included. Psychotherapy-only was stronger than combined treatment (1.9% v. 3.7%; OR 1.96 [1.20–3.20], p = 0.012) and ADM-only (3.0% v. 5.6%; OR 0.45 [0.30–0.67], p = 0.001) in decreasing the likelihood of [severe adverse events] in the primary and trim-and-fill sensitivity analyses. Combined treatment was better than ADM-only in reducing the probability of SAEs (6.0% v. 8.7%; OR 0.74 [0.56–0.96], p = 0.029), but this comparative efficacy finding was non-significant in the sensitivity analyses. Subgroup analyses revealed the advantage of psychotherapy-only over combined treatment and ADM-only for reducing SAE risk among children and adolescents and the benefit of combined treatment over ADM-only among adults. Overall, psychotherapy and combined treatment outperformed ADM-only in reducing the likelihood of SAEs, perhaps by conferring strategies to enhance reasons for living. Plausibly, psychotherapy should be prioritized for high-risk youths and combined treatment for high-risk adults with MDD.”
As Pfizer exhorted the peasants at this year’s Super Bowl commercial pageantry, “Here’s to Science™”! (Except when it runs to counter to financial interests; then it gets defunded and shelved and its practitioners run out of the field and any professional licenses confiscated by the state.)
Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
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