“This research offers analyses to summarize some well-known facts about depression. First, depression is a very heterogeneous disorder; there are many different expressions of depression that come from a wide array of causal factors and present themselves differently from person to person,” Prinstein said. “Second, there is no single treatment approach that works for everyone with depression.”
Major depression is one of the most common mental disorders in the U.S., impacting more than 8 percent of Americans.
I’mma go with that 8% is a very low ball estimate.
The study published this week in the journal Molecular Psychiatry concluded that there’s “no clear evidence” that serotonin levels or serotonin activity is responsible for depression.
Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that plays a key role in governing mood, sleep, digestion and other body functions. For years, a chemical imbalance of serotonin has been widely viewed as the culprit for depression, resulting in the widespread use of antidepressants like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which boosts serotonin in the brain.
Researchers say the review calls into question the basis for the use of antidepressants.
“It is always difficult to prove a negative, but I think we can safely say that after a vast amount of research conducted over several decades, there is no convincing evidence that depression is caused by serotonin abnormalities, particularly by lower levels or reduced activity of serotonin,” professor Joanna Moncrieff, the study’s lead author, said in a statement.