Fresh ideas about the causes of depression are bringing new treatments

By upending the thought that a chemic imbalance successful the encephalon is down depression, we are starting to recognize immoderate of its mysteries and make amended treatments

Mind 18 January 2023

By Clare Wilson

Giulia Neri

LAST year, 1 of our astir commonly held ideas astir slump was turned upside down. “Antidepressants survey casts uncertainty connected drugs taken by 8m people,” The Times paper stated successful July. Other publications ran likewise alarming headlines. Depression is 1 of the biggest aesculapian problems facing societies worldwide, treatments person agelong been arguable and present was probe showing that Prozac and different communal antidepressants are based connected a defunct proposal astir what causes the condition. The study’s pb researcher adjacent went arsenic acold arsenic to suggest that immoderate benefits from specified medicines travel from a placebo effect.

Most antidepressant drugs are said to enactment by restoring levels of a brain-signalling chemic called serotonin, an thought sometimes known arsenic the “chemical imbalance” proposal of depression. But the survey recovered that, contrary to what we person been told for decades, slump isn’t really caused by debased serotonin. This was a footwear successful the teeth for the galore radical who consciousness they beryllium connected antidepressants. It besides raises a cardinal question: if debased serotonin can’t explicate depression, past what can? That isn’t the lone enigma concerning the condition. We besides don’t cognize however talking oregon electroconvulsive therapies work, nor bash we recognize the interaction of genetics oregon accent connected intelligence health.

Yet, contempt each this uncertainty, immoderate astonishing advancement is being made. Two caller treatments person precocious go disposable and others successful the pipeline amusement promise. “The level of subject is much precocious than this insubstantial implies,” says Carmine Pariante astatine King’s College London. “Things are not arsenic bleak arsenic they appear.”

The 2 halfway features of slump are debased temper and a …