Does serotonin, on which antidepressants act, really have a link with…depression? A study from the University College of London affirms that there is no scientific basis allowing to affirm it, which calls into question the massive and increasing prescription of these psychotropic drugs. Psychotropics that the French love.
Covid-19 and the explosion of depression
If the prescription of antidepressants has not stopped increasing since 2010 – the metro, work, sleep cycle not helping to feel better, it has accelerated further since the start of the Covid-19 crisis. And for good reason ! Repeated confinement and isolation do not create happiness. Many anxiety disorders, eating disorders, sleep disorders or depressive syndromes have been reported nationwide over the past two years, which has led to a large intake of psychotropic drugs among the French. Even the smallest are affected, as reported by the WHO.
Read also: Consequences of Covid-19 in children: from a health crisis to a “mental pandemic”
An observation that worries more and more psychologists. “Psychically, I find that people are not doing well”declared Marie-Estelle Dupont, clinical psychologist, in Le FigaroJuly 15, 2022. And to add: “Let’s say that out of the 99.9% of Covid survivors, there is unfortunately a terribly large percentage of people who were doing relatively well before and who are doing poorly today”. However, it is a reflex that has become commonplace: when you are feeling bad, you take antidepressants – about one in four French people take them. A trend that has only increased with the health crisis. Despite the warnings of some health professionals, a report from Vidal confirms the “sharp increase in deliveries of antidepressant, antipsychotic, anxiolytic and hypnotic drugs” during the period from March 2020 to April 2021. Is this really the solution?
See also: The weakened mental health of the French becomes a “public health problem”
Is serotonin a red herring?
As Vidal explains in his article on antidepressants, since the 1980s, drugs “prescribed in first intention” are often the “serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRIs)”. It is a thesis defended by the majority of doctors: the levels of serotonin, or its activity, would be responsible for depression. But English researchers from the University College of London have come to upset the gains. In one study, they claim that the theory serotonin deficiency is not responsible for depression ; it would not be valid and would not be based on any scientific basis. “There is no convincing evidence that depression is associated with or caused by lower serotonin concentrations or activity”they write.
Their research was based on a comparison between the levels of serotonin in the bodies of healthy people and in those of depressed people. No difference is observed. An Alternative Santé article on the subject indicates “that no genetic variation in serotonin production is correlated with a greater risk of depression”. Worse, the English researchers explain that long-term use of these psychotropic drugs may reduce serotonin concentrationprolonging the suffering of the patients “unnecessarily”.
According to Marta Estrela, a researcher in biomedical sciences, the excessive consumption of this type of drug is linked to several factors, including: “the increase in the prevalence of common mental disorders, the tendency to prescribe antidepressants rather than non-drug therapies, the ease of access to antidepressants, or even the lack of investment in therapeutic innovation”. However, if SRIs are better tolerated, no antidepressant is free from side effects. One of them : profits of pharmaceutical companies.
The “Big Pharma” side effect
But that’s not all. Some have pointed to serious adverse effects, including “behavioral disorders, changes in consciousness, irritability, aggressiveness or restlessness”or even “suicidal tendencies”, as reported in another article by Alternative Santé. The peak!
Other tracks, often non-drug, are therefore preferred to fight against depression. Among them, the practice of meditation and psychotherapy, but also the consumption of St. John’s wort, of which “therapeutic properties have been extensively studied”as the Vidal reports.
For his part, the pulmonologist Philippe Even affirms that the massive sale of antidepressants only benefits the big pharmaceutical companies, which reap “100 billion dollars a year”. According to him, they have “manufactured depression”. In a program from Les Grandes Gueules, broadcast in September 2018, he explained that doctors prescribe it massivelybecause they “are indoctrinated, but they don’t have time to inform themselves, it takes six hours a day. They read what they are told, and these publications are entirely financed by the pharmaceutical industry”. A speech that is reminiscent, retrospectively, of the debates around Covid-19, its treatments and its vaccines…
Clearly, if modern medicine considers that the “chemical imbalance” in serotonin is responsible for depression, other specialists argue that this theory is a real blow for patients, a cure worse than the disease.
See also: Pharmaceutical laboratories, psychiatry and global stateless oligarchy, the deadly cocktail